Children's Schooling and Parental Migration: Empirical Evidence on the 'Left-behind' Generation in Pakistan

Abstract

This study examines the long-term effects of parental international migration on the schooling of children left behind in Pakistan. Although parents' migration usually benefits children economically but the lack of parental care may cause relational and psychological problems that may affect children's welfare in the long term. The locale of the present study is district Gujrat where the labor migration is considered as the best viable way to cope with an increasing poverty and the scarcity of public resources for sustaining households' incomes. To gain the objectives of the study, a mix methods approach has been used for the collection and analysis of data. In the present study the impact of migration on the education of the children was measured through their enrolment in school, type of institution and level of investment on education, dropout from the school, level of achievement. The results show that parental migration has a positive impact on the enrolment of children and investment on education, but it has negative impact on the dropout and level of achievement especially in case of boys.