Impact of Parental Migration on Education of Children Left Behind: Case of Kyrgyz Republic

Abstract

There is a growing concern that parental migration has a complex range of social and economic impacts on the lives of children who remain in the origin households. This paper aims to examine the effects of the migration activities of parents on the education of the left-behind children in the Kyrgyz Republic, a country with a very large number of labor migrants abroad. With the use of cross-sectional data from the Life in Kyrgyzstan Survey, 2013, quantitative research is conducted. For the purpose of obtaining more reliable results, the Poisson estimation method was used. The number of hours children spend each day in doing their homework was used as the main measurement for children`s education. The results that were found in the current paper are that parental migration negatively affects the education of children left behind.