Childhood Left-Behind Experience and Employment Quality of New-Generation Migrants in China

• Published in: Population research and policy review Vol. 39; no. 4; pp. 691 - 718
• Main Authors: Liu, Jianbo, Zheng, Xiaodong, Parker, Marie, Fang, Xiangming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.08.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adults; Childhood; Children; Demography; Empirical analysis; Employee benefits; Employment; Human capital; Indicators; Labor force participation; Mental health; Mental health services; Migrant workers; Migrants; Original Research; Population Economics; Quality; Quality management; Rural areas; Rural urban migration; Social Sciences; Sociology; Stability; Wages & salaries; Work; Youth employment; China; Human capital; China; Employment quality; Left-behind experience; New-generation migrant
• ISSN: 0167-5923; 1573-7829
• DOI: 10.1007/s11113-020-09568-w

This is the first study that empirically investigates the associations between left-behind experience in childhood and the quality of employment in adulthood for young rural-to-urban migrants in China, a population known as new-generation migrants. Toward this end, we consider several indicators of employment quality, including wages, employee benefits, work intensity and employment stability, and explore the possible channels between the childhood left-behind experience and employment quality indicators. Our 2013 Migrant Worker Survey shows that 40% of young migrants ( n  = 1802) have been left-behind for more than 6 months before 16 years of age and 7% of new-generation migrants have childhood left-behind experience for at least 3 years. Through empirical analysis, we find that the childhood left-behind experience, especially long-term experience, adversely affects the wages and employment stability of young migrants. In addition, the results of this study show that long-term left-behind experience is adversely associated with correlates of human capital, especially mental health, which subsequently affects adulthood employment quality. Policies should be improved to decrease the occurrence of left-behind children and, when this cannot be avoided, programs and services are required to reduce the negative effects of childhood left-behind experience on new-generation migrants.