Family strategies: Labor migration, multigenerational households, and children's schooling in Nepal

Abstract

Temporary migration to international destinations has many implications for the family members left behind. This paper discusses family economic theoretical perspectives and the family strategies that are adopted in Chitwan, Nepal. The family strategies include single united, split‐single generation, multigenerational, and split‐multigenerational households that are linked to the presence or absence of fathers and grandfathers. We examined how family strategies impact school outcomes, that is, school investment and school progress. We obtained three critical findings about family migration and structure strategies and school investment. First, multigenerational family strategies mitigated the negative association between siblings on educational investments. Second, split‐household strategies mitigated the negative associations between age and private school and between remittance dependency and top school fees. Third, family strategies shaped how ethnicity and caste influence educational investments as split‐household, multigenerational (and both) mitigated negative connection between the least powerful castes and ethnicities and school investment. Our findings did not show significant associations between family strategies and children's educational progress in Chitwan. Families in rural Nepal are responding to macrostructural changes, and there is a need for more research to better understand shifting family migration and household structure strategies, in all their complexities, and their implications for children in rural Nepal or other rural locations with a high temporary migration rate.