The educational consequences of migration for children in China

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Abstract

Recent research literature on migration in China has mainly focused on adult migrants. As more and more people participate in the migration process and as migrants expand the duration of their stays in cities, migrant children increasingly become part of the migration stream. The presence of large numbers of migrant children in cities, especially children without local hukou, creates major problems for their parents and challenges for education policy-makers. In this paper, we examine the school enrollment of migrant children who resided in cities of Guangdong province in 1995. Using data from the 1995 China 1% Population Sample Survey, we apply a research strategy that incorporates both migration origin as well as destination. This allows us to estimate school enrollment rates for temporary migrant children, permanent migrant children, and local children, in addition to non-migrant children at the place of origin. Two major findings emerge from multivariate analyses of school enrollment. First, temporary migrant children are much less likely to be enrolled in school compared to local children. Temporary migrants with less than one year of residence in cities suffer the most. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, permanent migrant children are more likely to be enrolled in school than local children due largely to the highly selective nature of their parents. Second, compared to non-migrant children at the place of origin, rural temporary migrant children from Guangdong also encounter a major disadvantage in terms of school enrollment. As education becomes more and more important for socio-economic mobility in the Chinese society, such disadvantages faced by temporary migrant children are likely to have detrimental and long-term consequences for migrant children and for urban society as a whole.

Introduction

One of the most significant social trends in China during the 1990s is the large volume of internal migrants (World Bank, 1997). With the increasing flow of migrants, a body of literature on migration in China is quickly emerging. Students of migration in China have documented the trends of migration since 1949 (Zhao, 2000), occupational attainment of migrants (Yang and Guo, 1996), gender patterns of migration (Fan, 1996, Lee, 1998), the determinants of migration and return migration (Ma, 2001, Rozelle et al., 1999), and the issue of rural migration and citizenship (Solinger, 1999). Although adult migrants still face difficulties and hurdles in urban China, the consensus seems to be that migration has had a major positive impact on the economies of both the sending and receiving communities. In addition, to the extent that most migrants make more financial gains at the place of destination than at the place of origin, migrants too benefited from the migration process. What is less clear, however, is the consequence of migration for migrant children and children of migrants.

The fact that the issue of education of migrant children did not get serious attention from the scholarly community until quite recently can be explained in part by the migration process itself. At the initial stage of the migration process, migration usually selects the young adult males. However, as migrants secure employment and settle down, they are more likely to bring other family members, including their spouses and children. For example, in the 1997 Census of the Floating Population in Shanghai, children of school age account for nearly 12% of the total migrant population (Zhang, 1998). The tidal wave of China’s migration process, which started in the 1980s, has reached a point where some migrants who arrived in the earlier years are now bearing their children in these cities. These city-born migrant children had already reached school age by the 1990s. Therefore, the issue of education of migrant children is likely to be more and more important over time.

In this paper, we shift the research attention from adult migrants to migrant children, especially in terms of their school enrollment. Using individual-level data from the 1995 China 1% Population Sample Survey, we examine how migrant children fare in the migration process in the mid-1990s. We are particularly concerned with enrollment of school-age migrant children between the ages of 6 and 15, an age group for whom 9-year compulsory education is required in China (PRC, 1998). As in other societies, education is the engine of socio-economic mobility in China (Deng and Treiman, 1997). Recent research on migration in China shows that there is a large concentration of adult migrants in low status occupations. Whether or not this pattern will be shifted or reproduced in the second generation of migrants and migrant children depends largely on how well migrant children are educated. Therefore, it is absolutely essential for migrant children to be enrolled in and to complete elementary and secondary schools, as this is a necessary step for socioeconomic advancement in urban society.

Section snippets

Migration, children’s education, and hukou

The issue of migration and children’s educational outcomes has been a major topic for scholarly inquiry (Coleman, 1988, Long, 1975, Lloyd and Blanc, 1996, Pribesh and Downey, 1999). The issue takes on a particular importance in developing countries, as these countries’ economies are developing, education is expected to play increasingly important role in individual mobility and life chances (Curran et al., forthcoming). Much of recent work concerning migration and children’s school performance

Migrant children’s school enrollment: incorporating origin and destination

Recent literature on migration suggests that it is often advantageous to consider both origin and destination when studying consequences of migration on various socio-demographic variables such as fertility and infant mortality. In a series of papers, Nancy Landale and her associates used data from both Puerto Ricans who reside in the mainland US and Puerto Ricans who reside in Puerto Rico to study issues including family formation, child-bearing, and infant mortality (Landale, 1994, Landale

The case of Guangdong province

The empirical portion of our paper focuses on Guangdong, a province located in the southern part of China (see Fig. 1 for the location of Guangdong province). Guangdong province and its cities have been the subject of many recent studies (Ikels, 1996, Vogel, 1989, Wong and Huen, 1998). In several crucial aspects, Guangdong is “one step ahead in China” (Vogel, 1989). For example, in 1995, Guangdong’s gross domestic product ranked first in China (SSB, 1997a). Another major characteristic of

Data and methods

The data for this study come from the 1995 China 1% Population Sample Survey conducted by China State Statistical Bureau on October 1, 1995 (SSB, 1997b). The 1995 survey is considered a mini-census conducted between the 1990 and the 2000 Chinese censuses. Our analysis relies on a 25% sub-sample of the Guangdong portion of the 1995 China 1% Population Sample Survey. This Survey contains basic socio-demographic characteristics of each member of selected households. One unique feature of the 1995

Descriptive statistics

To facilitate a basic understanding of our sample, descriptive statistics for migrant children and non-migrant children are displayed in Table 1. We highlight the major findings below. With respect to school enrollment rate by migration status, it is somewhat surprising to find that permanent migrant children have the highest rate of school enrollment, followed by local children in cities, and temporary migrant children.

Conclusion and discussion

As migration continues to increase in the mid-1990s and beyond, the emerging literature on migration in China seems to have reached the consensus that the recent large volume of migration has indeed benefited the places of destination and origin, along with the migrant themselves. Nevertheless what is less clear is how migrant children fare in this large-scale social transformation.

In this paper, we provide perhaps the most systematic empirical analysis to date of school enrollment of migrant

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    This project is supported by a FIRST Award (1R29HD34878) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. We thank Richard Alba, Don Hernandez, John Logan, Steve Messner, and three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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