Parental Migration and Human Capital of Children Left Behind in Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

A tremendous number of people are migrating from Kyrgyzstan to different countries, mainly Russia and Kazakhstan, every year. As a result, most of the children of these migrants are left behind with other members of the household. In addition to that, parental migration might have an impact on the educational and health outcomes of children left behind. This paper will mainly analyse the effect of maternal, paternal and migration of both parents on the human capital outcomes of children left behind in Kyrgyzstan based on the Life in Kyrgyzstan Survey for the year of 2016. The estimation methodology, which is used is Linear Probability and Logistic Models, to analyse the cross-sectional data and observe the relationships between the variable of interest, which is parental migration, and the education outcomes such as education enrollment, school attendance and the health outcomes such as the vaccination and vaccination card. In addition to that, other variables such as household size, number of children, total assets, household income, education of the head of household, age and gender are introduced as controls. Various literature on parental migration and health and education of children left behind is reviewed and analysed. Thus, as a concluding remark, the relationship and effects of parental migration on the outcome variables of children left behind are inconclusive. In other words, some papers resulted in negative correlation, while others presented the positive or even insignificant effects. There is a limited literature on the relationship of parental migration and human capital of children left behind in Kyrgyzstan and therefore, this paper will greatly contribute to this sphere.