Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Studies of intergenerational human capital transmission tend to examine resource abundant societies, where decisions between parental time with children and employment often exist at the intensive hourly margin. This paper extends the literature by studying the left-behind children in rural China using nationally representative longitudinal datasets from 1997-2015. This paper contributes to literature in three ways: First, we assess the extensive margin isolating the effect of parental time on children’s development from that of financial inputs gained through migration for work. In rural China, migrants often have to leave their children behind while seeking employment in urban locations and maternal time spent with children essentially goes to zero. Second, our empirical analysis focuses on the impact of mother’s absenteeism on daughter’s development in a son-preference environment. The parenting customs in rural China place an emphasis on sons being economically successful. With mothers away, left behind daughters fall into a more vulnerable status. To the best of our knowledge, the connection between mother’s absenteeism from migration and human capital investment in daughters has rarely been studied by economists. Third, we extend the parental investment literature to a developing economy, China, with severe resource constraints in the rural regions. Given the lack of financial assets and dearth of loans, the impact of parental time and resource investments on children vary considerably between families with differential levels of wealth and differential migration choices of parents. Our results suggest possible interventions in China to boost intergenerational human capital transmissions and to improve access to credit; these policies can also be extended to other developing regions with vulnerable populations of daughters and sons.