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Restrictions On Migration Create Gender Inequality: The Story Of China's Left-Behind Children, Xuwen Gao, Wenquan Liang, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Ran Song
Restrictions On Migration Create Gender Inequality: The Story Of China's Left-Behind Children, Xuwen Gao, Wenquan Liang, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Ran Song
Discussion Papers
About 11% of the Chinese population are rural-urban migrants, and the vast
majority of them (124 million people) possess a rural hukou which severely
restrict their children’s access to urban public schools. As a result, 61 million
children are left behind in rural areas. We use a regression-discontinuity
design based on school enrollment age cutoffs to document that migrants are
significantly more likely to leave middle-school-aged daughters behind in poor
rural areas without either parent present when schooling becomes expensive,
compared to middle-school-aged sons. The effect is larger when the daughter
has a male sibling. Migrant parents send significantly less …