Children's Schooling and Parental Migration: Empirical Evidence on the

21 Pages Posted: 26 Apr 2010 Last revised: 16 Apr 2023

See all articles by Gianna Claudia Giannelli

Gianna Claudia Giannelli

University of Florence - Dipartimento di Studi sullo Stato; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Lucia Mangiavacchi

University of Florence - Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche

Abstract

This article investigates the long-term effects of parental migration abroad on the schooling of children left behind in Albania. Although parents' migration usually benefits children economically, the lack of parental care may cause relational and psychological problems that may affect children's welfare in the long-term. The phenomenon of children left behind –mainly by fathers – is very relevant in Albania where migration has represented the only viable way to cope with increasing poverty and the absence of public resources for sustaining households’ incomes. Between 1990 and 2005 in Albania 21.7% of children under 18 have been left behind, with an average parental absence of 9.5 months. Using detailed information on family migration drawn from the Living Standard Measurement Survey for 2005, multiple choice models are applied to evaluate the school progression of older children and adolescents. A duration analysis of school participation with both discrete and continuous time models is then performed. The results show that past parental migration has a negative effect on school attendance in the long-term with higher hazards of school drop-outs for children left behind. These results are robust to the use of different econometric techniques and model specifications.

Keywords: children, Albania, duration analysis, migration, schooling

JEL Classification: J13, J18, O15, P36

Suggested Citation

Giannelli, Gianna Claudia and Mangiavacchi, Lucia, Children's Schooling and Parental Migration: Empirical Evidence on the. IZA Discussion Paper No. 4888, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1595529 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1595529

Gianna Claudia Giannelli (Contact Author)

University of Florence - Dipartimento di Studi sullo Stato ( email )

Via S. Caterina d'Alessandria 3
Firenze 50129
Italy
+39-055-4622926 (Phone)
+39-055-472102 (Fax)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Lucia Mangiavacchi

University of Florence - Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche ( email )

Florence 50127
Italy

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