Does parental absence reduce cognitive achievements? Evidence from rural China

摘要: Abstract Many children worldwide are left-behind by parents migrating for work — over 61 million in rural China alone, almost half of whom both parents. While previous literature considers impacts one parent absent on educational inputs (e.g., study time, enrollment, schooling attainment), this directly investigates children's learning (test scores) and distinguishes absence versus Dynamic panel methods that control unobserved individual heterogeneity endogeneity parental used with data collected from China. The estimates indicate significant negative being cognitive development, reducing their contemporary achievements 5.4 percentile points math 5.1 Chinese, but much smaller insignificant parent. Cross-sectional evidence indicates only is associated substantially lower family after-school tutoring.