The Impact of Children and Parents on Different Gender's Migration Status – A Longitudinal Study of Migrant Households in Sichuan and Anhui in China

By using a longitudinal study of 300 households in Sichuan and Anhui, this paper aims to combine the discussions of initiation of migration, returned migrants, and circular migration together. By building multi-level regression models, I use event history analysis to show how children and parents impact migrants’ migration decisions overtime. When other factors are controlled, children’s age and parents’ health impact men and women’s migration status in different ways: when the increase of children’s ages generally increases the probability of starting migration for men, the change of the children’s ages only impacts women’s out-migration when all children reach the age of six – the age when children start primary school. Women tend to return to the villages when the children are 16 years old and still in school – the time when the children are preparing for senior high school entrance exam. When children of the household start going to college, both men and women’s migration probability significantly increases. When the parents report bad health issues, the women are very likely to return to villages, while men’s migration status usually do not change. The results show how migration works as a household strategy in China, and gender still decides the division of labor within a household.