IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v53y2017i3p444-459.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Child Development and Migrant Transnationalism: The Health of Children Who Stay Behind in Ghana and Nigeria

Author

Listed:
  • Victor Cebotari
  • Valentina Mazzucato
  • Melissa Siegel

Abstract

This paper examines the relation between parental migration and children’s health in Ghana (N = 2760) and Nigeria (N = 2168) and considers four dimensions of parental migration: the type of separation, parental migration and the caregiver, stability of care arrangements, and the availability of remittances. By employing an ordered scale of children’s self-rated health, we found that children with international migrant parents who are divorced/separated are less likely than children in non-migrant families to have good health. The magnitude of the effects are higher in Nigeria, attesting for a greater vulnerability of Nigerian children in divorced migrant families. Among children with parents living abroad who are stably married, specific dimensions of children’s transnational life are associated with negative health, while others are not. This study highlights the sensitivity of results to the context of parent-child separation and to the transnational dimension being measured.

Suggested Citation

  • Victor Cebotari & Valentina Mazzucato & Melissa Siegel, 2017. "Child Development and Migrant Transnationalism: The Health of Children Who Stay Behind in Ghana and Nigeria," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(3), pages 444-459, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:53:y:2017:i:3:p:444-459
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2016.1187723
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2016.1187723
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220388.2016.1187723?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. World Bank, 2011. "Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011 : Second Edition," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2522.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liu, Mengqi & Villa, Kira M., 2020. "Solution or isolation: Is boarding school a good solution for left-behind children in rural China?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).

    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. Christian Hubert Ebeke, 2011. "Does the dual-citizenship recognition determine the level and the utilization of international remittances? Cross-Country Evidence," CERDI Working papers halshs-00559528, HAL.
    2. Ilhom Abdulloev & Ira N Gang & Myeong-Su Yun, 2014. "Migration, Education and the Gender Gap in Labour Force Participation," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 26(4), pages 509-526, September.
    3. Laetitia Duval & François-Charles Wolff, 2016. "Emigration intentions of Roma: evidence from Central and South-East Europe," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 87-107, January.
    4. Mazzucato, Valentina & Cebotari, Victor & Veale, Angela & White, Allen & Grassi, Marzia & Vivet, Jeanne, 2015. "International parental migration and the psychological well-being of children in Ghana, Nigeria, and Angola," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 215-224.
    5. Ira N. Gang & Kseniia Gatskova & John Landon-Lane & Myeong-Su Yun, 2018. "Vulnerability to Poverty: Tajikistan During and After the Global Financial Crisis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 925-951, August.
    6. Mark Musumba & Mjelde & Adusumilli, 2015. "Remittance receipts and allocation: a study of three African countries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(59), pages 6375-6389, December.
    7. Escriba-Folch, Abel & Meseguer, Covadonga & Wright, Joseph, 2018. "Remittances and protest in dictatorships," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 89058, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Civljak Kristijan, 2019. "Choice Under Uncertainty: The Settlement Decisions of Serbian Self-Initiated Expatriates in the United States," Journal of Intercultural Management, Sciendo, vol. 11(1), pages 47-79, March.
    9. Steve Brito & Ana Corbacho & Rene Osorio Rivas, 2014. "Remittances and the Impact on Crime in Mexico," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 85093, Inter-American Development Bank.
    10. Eleftherios Giovanis, 2022. "The effects of international migration on well-being of natives and immigrants: evidence from Germany, Switzerland and the UK," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(6), pages 1-33, June.
    11. Mozumder, Lavlu & Islam, Mohammad Amirul, 2017. "Effects Of Remittances On Human Capital Development: An Empirical Analysis," Bangladesh Journal of Agricultural Economics, Bangladesh Agricultural University, vol. 36(1-2), April.
    12. Kerilyn Schewel & Sonja Fransen, 2018. "Formal Education and Migration Aspirations in Ethiopia," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 44(3), pages 555-587, September.
    13. Jean Louis Combes & Christian Ebeke & Mathilde Maurel, 2015. "The effect of remittances prior to an election," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(38), pages 4074-4089, August.
    14. Jean-Louis Combes & Christian Hubert Ebeke & Mathilde Maurel & Urbain Thierry Yogo, 2011. "Remittances and the prevalence of working poor," Post-Print halshs-00587797, HAL.
    15. ., 2012. "Migration impact assessment: a state of the art," Chapters, in: Peter Nijkamp & Jacques Poot & Mediha Sahin (ed.), Migration Impact Assessment, chapter 1, pages 3-62, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Popular Gentle & Rik Thwaites & Digby Race & Kim Alexander & Tek Maraseni, 2018. "Household and community responses to impacts of climate change in the rural hills of Nepal," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 267-282, March.
    17. Laetitia Duval & François-Charles Wolff, 2013. "The consumption-enhancing effect of remittances: Evidence from Kosovo," wiiw Balkan Observatory Working Papers 107, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    18. Waidler, J. & Hagen-Zanker, J. & Gassmann, F. & Siegel, M., 2014. "Do remittances and social assistance have different impacts on expenditure patterns of recipient households?: The Moldovan case," MERIT Working Papers 2014-072, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    19. Nobles, Jenna & Rubalcava, Luis & Teruel, Graciela, 2015. "After spouses depart: Emotional wellbeing among nonmigrant Mexican mothers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 236-244.
    20. Ahmat Jidoud, 2015. "Remittances and Macroeconomic Volatility in African Countries," IMF Working Papers 2015/049, International Monetary Fund.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:jdevst:v:53:y:2017:i:3:p:444-459. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FJDS20 .

    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.