Children's Schooling, Parental Migration, and Environment in Nepal

According to the extant research, labor migration of a parent often has beneficial consequences for children's schooling in the sending context, but there has been less attention to variations in migration experiences across the parent’s own life course and how this timing may alter outcomes for children of migrants. We apply a life course approach to the study of fathers' international migration experiences. The setting for our study is the Chitwan Valley of Nepal, a growing rural area with rapid social change characterized by large in- and out-migration. Using rich life history calendar data of parental migration and children’s schooling, we examine how multiple conceptualizations of parental migration affect children's school leaving before 10 years (an important education credential point in Nepal). We find that pre-marital migration experience appears to have minimal impact on children's schooling, whereas post-marital experience significantly decreases children's school exit, compared to children of fathers who never migrated outside Nepal. Our next step was to consider whether migration and children's schooling decisions are affected by local environmental conditions in origin communities. We find some evidence that measures of environmental perceptions moderate relationships between migration and children's schooling.