Abstract
In the rural areas of China, there is a high occurrence of parental migration, wherein adults are flushed into urban areas to search for employment opportunities, leading to millions of left-behind children (LBC) in rural China. LBC attracts more attention from the social community and Chinese government. Here, we compared the life satisfaction and academic achievement of left-behind children (LBC) and non-left-behind children (NLBC) in rural regions that send out migrant labor in Hubei province, central China. We investigated 1031 LBC and 992 NLBC students in grades 4 to 9 in ten elementary and four middle schools, using a structured questionnaire including sociodemographic characteristics, life satisfaction, and academic achievement scores. The results showed that LBC have a lower life satisfaction and lower academic achievement than NLBC (p < 0.01). Meanwhile, as the child’s age at separation from parents decreased, their life satisfaction decreased. Additionally, correlations were observed between life satisfaction and academic achievement scores in LBC (p = 0.004) as well as in NLBC (p = 0.064). Collectively, these findings provide novel insights into a comprehensive understanding of LBC and suggest that the life satisfaction levels of LBC should be improved in rural China.
Highlights
With rapid economic and social development, more and more residents from rural areas have been moving into urban areas in order to seek better jobs and human development opportunities [1].These labor population movements have led to 61 million left-behind children (LBC) in rural China, an issue which is attracting more and more attention from the social community and Chinese government [2]
A significant difference in grade 7 was found between the LBC and non-left-behind children (NLBC) (χ2 = 8.124, p = 0.004)
The findings of this study showed that LBC have lower life satisfaction than NLBC, which could be due to the absence of parental care
Summary
With rapid economic and social development, more and more residents from rural areas have been moving into urban areas in order to seek better jobs and human development opportunities [1]. These labor population movements have led to 61 million left-behind children (LBC) in rural China, an issue which is attracting more and more attention from the social community and Chinese government [2]. A great deal of literature has demonstrated that parental migration has a negative or positive influence on the psychological development of children, especially in developing countries like China, the Philippines, and Mexico [6,7]. Zhang et al [8]
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