IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v65y2015icp62-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Feminization of International Migration and its Effects on the Children Left Behind: Evidence from the Philippines

Author

Listed:
  • Cortes, Patricia

Abstract

This paper explores the effects of a mother’s migration on her children’s well-being. I use children with migrant fathers as the main control group to separately identify the effects coming from remittances from those resulting from parental absence. Exploiting demand shocks as an exogenous source of variation in the probability that the mother migrates, I find suggestive evidence that children of migrant mothers are more likely to lag behind in school compared to children with migrant fathers. Controlling for remittances does not change this result, supporting the hypothesis that a mother’s absence has a stronger detrimental effect than a father’s.

Suggested Citation

  • Cortes, Patricia, 2015. "The Feminization of International Migration and its Effects on the Children Left Behind: Evidence from the Philippines," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 62-78.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:65:y:2015:i:c:p:62-78
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.10.021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X13002337
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.10.021?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marianne Bertrand & Jessica Pan, 2013. "The Trouble with Boys: Social Influences and the Gender Gap in Disruptive Behavior," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 32-64, January.
    2. Clemens, Michael A. & Tiongson, Erwin R., 2012. "Split decisions : family finance when a policy discontinuity allocates overseas work," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6287, The World Bank.
    3. Dean Yang, 2008. "International Migration, Remittances and Household Investment: Evidence from Philippine Migrants’ Exchange Rate Shocks," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 591-630, April.
    4. Chand, Satish & Clemens, Michael A., 2023. "Human capital investment under exit options: Evidence from a natural quasi-experiment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    5. Corak, Miles, 2001. "Death and Divorce: The Long-Term Consequences of Parental Loss on Adolescents," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(3), pages 682-715, July.
    6. Esther Duflo, 2003. "Grandmothers and Granddaughters: Old-Age Pensions and Intrahousehold Allocation in South Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 17(1), pages 1-25, June.
    7. David S. Lyle, 2006. "Using Military Deployments and Job Assignments to Estimate the Effect of Parental Absences and Household Relocations on Children's Academic Achievement," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 319-350, April.
    8. Björkman, Martina, 2006. "Income Shocks and Gender Gaps in Education: Evidence from Uganda," Seminar Papers 744, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
    9. Alejandra Cox Edwards & Manuelita Ureta, 2003. "International Migration, Remittances, and Schooling: Evidence from El Salvador," NBER Working Papers 9766, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Paul Gertler & David I. Levine & Minnie Ames, 2004. "Schooling and Parental Death," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 211-225, February.
    11. Francisca Antman, 2012. "Gender, educational attainment, and the impact of parental migration on children left behind," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(4), pages 1187-1214, October.
    12. Patricia Cortés & Jessica Pan, 2013. "Outsourcing Household Production: Foreign Domestic Workers and Native Labor Supply in Hong Kong," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 327-371.
    13. Satish Chand & Michael A. Clemens, 2008. "Skilled emigration and skill creation: A quasi-experiment," International and Development Economics Working Papers idec08-05, International and Development Economics.
    14. Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), 2013. "International Handbook on the Economics of Migration," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 4026.
    15. Adams Jr., Richard H. & Cuecuecha, Alfredo, 2010. "Remittances, Household Expenditure and Investment in Guatemala," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 1626-1641, November.
    16. Robert Haveman & Barbara Wolfe, 1995. "The Determinants of Children's Attainments: A Review of Methods and Findings," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 1829-1878, December.
    17. Elaina Rose, 1999. "Consumption Smoothing and Excess Female Mortality in Rural India," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(1), pages 41-49, February.
    18. David McKenzie & Hillel Rapoport, 2011. "Can migration reduce educational attainment? Evidence from Mexico," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 1331-1358, October.
    19. James H. Stock & Jonathan Wright, 2000. "GMM with Weak Identification," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1055-1096, September.
    20. Kevin Lang & Jay L. Zagorsky, 2001. "Does Growing up with a Parent Absent Really Hurt?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(2), pages 253-273.
    21. Edwards, Alejandra Cox & Ureta, Manuelita, 2003. "International migration, remittances, and schooling: evidence from El Salvador," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 429-461, December.
    22. Behrman, Jere R & Knowles, James C, 1999. "Household Income and Child Schooling in Vietnam," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 13(2), pages 211-256, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhang, Hongliang & Behrman, Jere R. & Fan, C. Simon & Wei, Xiangdong & Zhang, Junsen, 2014. "Does parental absence reduce cognitive achievements? Evidence from rural China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 181-195.
    2. Joanna M Clifton-Sprigg, 2019. "Out of sight, out of mind? The education outcomes of children with parents working abroad," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 71(1), pages 73-94.
    3. Clemens, Michael A. & Tiongson, Erwin R., 2012. "Split decisions : family finance when a policy discontinuity allocates overseas work," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6287, The World Bank.
    4. Davis, Jason & Brazil, Noli, 2016. "Disentangling fathers’ absences from household remittances in international migration: The case of educational attainment in Guatemala," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-11.
    5. Michael Clemens and Timothy N. Ogden, 2014. "Migration as a Strategy for Household Finance: A Research Agenda on Remittances, Payments, and Development- Working Paper 354," Working Papers 354, Center for Global Development.
    6. Francisca Antman, 2015. "Gender discrimination in the allocation of migrant household resources," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(3), pages 565-592, July.
    7. Bargain, Olivier B. & Boutin, Delphine, 2014. "Remittances and Child Labour in Africa: Evidence from Burkina Faso," IZA Discussion Papers 8007, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Slesh A. Shrestha & Nethra Palaniswamy, 2017. "Sibling rivalry and gender gap: intrahousehold substitution of male and female educational investments from male migration prospects," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 1355-1380, October.
    9. Teresa Randazzo & Filippo Pavanello & Enrica De Cian, 2021. "Adaptation to climate change: air-conditioning and the role of remittances," Working Papers 2021:, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    10. Feng Hu, 2013. "Does migration benefit the schooling of children left behind?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 29(2), pages 33-70.
    11. Xin Meng & Chikako Yamauchi, 2017. "Children of Migrants: The Cumulative Impact of Parental Migration on Children’s Education and Health Outcomes in China," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 54(5), pages 1677-1714, October.
    12. Calogero Carletto & Jennica Larrison & Çaglar Özden, 2014. "Informing migration policies: a data primer," Chapters, in: Robert E.B. Lucas (ed.), International Handbook on Migration and Economic Development, chapter 2, pages 9-41, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Cortés, Patricia, 2023. "Immigration, household production, and native women’s labor market outcomes: A survey of a global phenomenon," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    14. Michael A. Clemens & Timothy N. Ogden, 2020. "Migration and household finances: How a different framing can improve thinking about migration," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 38(1), pages 3-27, January.
    15. Francisca M. Antman, 2013. "The impact of migration on family left behind," Chapters, in: Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Migration, chapter 16, pages 293-308, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Pfeiffer, Friedhelm, 2014. "The Impact of Parents Migration on the Well-being of Children Left Behind: Initial Evidence from Romania," IZA Discussion Papers 8225, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Zhao, Qiran & Yu, Xiaohua & Wang, Xiaobing & Glauben, Thomas, 2014. "The impact of parental migration on children's school performance in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 43-54.
    18. Imtiaz Arif & Syed Ali Raza & Anita Friemann & Muhammad Tahir Suleman, 2019. "The Role of Remittances in the Development of Higher Education: Evidence from Top Remittance Receiving Countries," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 1233-1243, February.
    19. Jeenat Binta Jabbar, 2022. "Effects of parental migration on the education of left-behind children," Technium Social Sciences Journal, Technium Science, vol. 33(1), pages 309-350, July.
    20. Jamal Bouoiyour & Amal Miftah, 2015. "The impact of remittances on household investments in children's human capital: Evidence from Morocco," Working papers of CATT hal-01880327, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:65:y:2015:i:c:p:62-78. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.