A Research On The Cause And Mental Health Of Left-behind Children Under Chinese Hukou System

Numerous left-behind children are created in the process of domestic migration under the Hukou system in China.The literatures show that the left-behind experience lowers the children's health and academic achievements,as well as the future income for poor human capital.Therefore,the left-behind children may suffer an intergeneration transmission of being poor.The existing literatures discover the geographical distribution of left-behind children,but rare study talks about where the parents of left-behind children go,and it is still controversy over the quantity of left-behind children.The Hukou system with urban-rural separation is of course the cause of left-behind children,but it is necessary to further study the impact of settlement threshold of different cities on the migration under the background that the Hukou system is relaxed in middle and small cities.It is also debated that whether and how the left-behind experience has effect on the health of left-behind children.This paper aims to study the following closely correlative problems.First,what is the characteristics of left-behind children in China?Particularly,we focus on where the parents of left-behind children go.Second,what is the institutional origin of left-behind children in China?We focus on effect of the settlement threshold of big cities.Third,what and how the experience of being left-behind impact on the mental health of the children.Firstly,we estimate the quantity of left-behind children in China based on the data of migrant population from 2011 to 2015 collected by National Health and Family Planning Committee and the 6^thcensus data in 2010.It shows that the numbers of left-behind children whose age is below 18 are 39.33 million,37.69 million,36.84 million,37.96 million and40.61 million respectively from 2011 to 2015.The left-behind children whose parents both working away from their hometowns take over 70%of the total left-behind children.The parents of left-behind children centralize in big cities in Yangtze River Delta,Pearl River Delta and capital economic circle,where produce 75%left-behind children.Furthermore,the number of left-behind children is positively proportional to their schooling ages.The percentage of the left-behind children who already go to school is larger than that of those who have not gone to school yet.Owning to the policy of offering limited education to migrant children in big cities,the left-behind ration of junior and senior middle school students is pretty high to 35%and 40%.In one word,the parents of numerous left-behind children centralize in big cities,and the children are left behind with higher probability as their schooling ages increase.These stylized facts contribute important insights for us to investigate the institutional origin of left-behind children.Secondly,we analyze the reason of being left behind by focusing on the role of settlement threshold.Theoretically,the adult migrants centralize in big cities for higher income,while the high settlement threshold with skill bias in big cities separates the adult migrants and their children,which goes against the migrant family with lower education.By using the Monitoring Data of Chinese Domestic Migrant in 2014,the empirical study get three findings.?1?The children whose parents work in big cities with higher settlement threshold face higher probability to be left behind in their registered place,partly for higher living cost and unavailability of education.?2?The settlement threshold in big cities makes children be left behind mainly by themselves instead of with one of parents,because their parents choose to work together in the big cities,but high settlement threshold in big cities hinders the children of migrants from going to school in their parents'working cities.?3?Facing the same settlement threshold,the children whose parents with lower education have higher probability to be left behind,while the children whose parents with higher education have lower probability to be left behind.Therefore,the high settlement threshold cannot reverse the trend of population agglomeration in big cities,but produces massive left-behind children and inevitably produce the intergeneration transmission of income inequality.Thirdly,we study the effect of being left behind on the mental health of children.Theoretically,the absence of parents during the growing of children will raise the children's depression and thus lower the mental health of left-behind children.The empirical study by using the data of Chinese Family Panel Studies in 2010 supports the hypothesis.?1?For baseline regression,the experience being left behind will impose negative impact on children's mental health,and the children whose mothers are migrant workers suffer more negative effect than those whose fathers are migrant workers.?2?For mechanism check,children could release their depression by expressing their anxiety to parents and actively communicating with their parents.However,migrant parents could not supply high-quality accompanying for their children,and the children fail to get help from their migrant parents if they meet with difficulties,and this would lead to higher level depression of left-behind children.?3?For robustness check,the happiness,confidence and the will to communicate of left-behind children would be significantly negatively affected if their mothers work out and it will hinder the shaping of children's personality.?4?For endogeneity problem,we employ the probability of migrant parents in community or county level to be instrumented variable for individual migrant choice,and the results of two stages of OLS prove that the depression of left-behind children is deteriorated because the absence of their migrant parents'empathy accompany.Summarily,numerous adult migrants centralize in big cities for higher salary,but the strict settlement threshold with skill bias in big cities separate the children and their parents with low skills,and the absence of empathy accompany of their parents lower the mental health of left-behind children.This paper provides important policy instruction.The reform of Hukou system in China is carried by relaxing the limit of middle and small cities but making more strict control on big cities,the big cities try to hinder the population migrating in by high settlement threshold.Consequently,a new urban problem emerges:numerous migrants are attracted to big cities for high wage return,but the unavailability of basic education for migrant children prevents them go to school in big cities and left behind in their hometown.Particularly,the skill bias of settlement threshold raises the probability of being left behind for the children whose parents get less education,and thus lowers the quality of their human capital and produce intergeneration transmission of being poor.Therefore,the high settlement threshold in big cities cannot prevent the population inflow,but produces numerous left-behind children.The city government should provide basic public goods such as education for migrant children both by public and private finance,rather than limit the inflow of migrant;and the central government should stimulate the city government to do so by providing subsidy for the provision of education to migrant children.