Men's Labor Migration and Schooling of Children Left Behind in Rural Mozambique

Although there is substantial existing research on the relationships between labor migration and children's schooling, this research typically has emphasized the migrant versus non-migrant dichotomy. Labor migrants, however, are a diverse group: depending on their skills, networks, and available opportunities, some are economically more successful than others. In this paper, we examine the association between diverse conceptualizations of male labor migration and an important family outcome: the discontinuation of children’s schooling. The setting for our analyses is rural southern Mozambique, an area characterized by massive male labor migration, mainly to South Africa. The data come from a multi-wave panel study that has been monitoring rural women's reproductive health and well-being, their children's schooling, and their experience with male labor migration since 2006. We examine male migration success and accrued migration experience, and find that both are positively associated with children's schooling.