Parental Labor Research Articles

Impacts of international labor migration on the mental health and well-being of left-behind children

Abstract Background Labor migration is a challenge for the globalised world due to its long-term effects such as the formation of transnational families with the particularly vulnerable groups of left-behind children (LBC). These families, where family members of migrant workers are 'left-behind' are becoming common practice in many developing countries. In this systematic literature review, we aimed to investigate the impacts of parental labor migration on the mental health and well-being of their LBC. Methods Following the PRISMA guidelines, we performed a systematic literature search in English using PubMed, PsychINFO, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar for studies, investigating mental health and well-being among LBC who live in transnational families. Case-reports, qualitative studies as well as opinion papers were excluded. We summarized the evidence and additionally compared quantitative results. Results 25 studies were selected for the final analysis. We found that mental health and well-being outcomes of LBC differ across regions and sometimes even within regions. Only studies conducted in South America and South Asia observed purely negative effects. Overall, LBC show abnormal SDQ (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) scores and report higher levels of depression and loneliness, than children who do not live in transnational families. Evidence suggests that gender of migrant parent, culture and other transnational family characteristics such as family arrangement, the role of the mother and the role of the father contribute to the well-being and psychological health of LBC. Conclusions International migration of parents has more negative than positive effects (e.g. through remittances) on the mental health and well-being of LBC. However, the effects strongly depend on family arrangements and care giving practices in migrants' sending countries. Key messages Further research utilizing longitudinal data is needed to better explore the complex and long-term effects of parental migration on LBC. Multidimensional family characteristics are crucial and should be better explored when examining the impacts of migratory separation on left-behind children.

Young Children and Parents' Labor Supply during COVID-19

We study the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on the labor supply of parents with young children. Using the monthly Current Population Survey, and following a pre-analysis plan, we use three variations of difference-in-differences to compare workers with childcare needs to those without. The first compares parents with young children and those without young children, while the second and third rely on the presence of someone who could provide childcare in the household: a teenager in one and a grandparent in the other. We analyze three outcomes: whether parents were “at work” (not sick, on vacation, or otherwise away from his or her job); whether they were employed; and hours worked. Contrary to expectation, we find the labor supply of parents with young children was not negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, some evidence suggests they were more likely to be working after the pandemic unfolded. For the outcomes of being at work and employed, our results are not systematically different for men and women, but some findings suggest women with young children worked almost an hour longer per week than those without. These results suggest that factors like employers allowing employees to work at home and informal sources of childcare aided parents in avoiding negative shocks to their labor supply during the pandemic.

Effects of International Labour Migration on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Left-Behind Children: A Systematic Literature Review.

Labour migration is a challenge for the globalised world due to its long-term effects such as the formation of transnational families. These families, where family members of migrant workers are “left-behind”, are becoming a common phenomenon in many low- and middle-income countries. Our systematic literature review investigated the effects of international parental labour migration on the mental health and well-being of left-behind children. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we performed searches in PubMed, PsychINFO, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar, resulting in 30 finally included studies. We found that mental health and well-being outcomes of left-behind children differed across and sometimes even within regions. However, only studies conducted in the Americas and South Asia observed purely negative effects. Overall, left-behind children show abnormal Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire scores and report higher levels of depression and loneliness than children who do not live in transnational families. Evidence from the studies suggests that gender of the migrant parent, culture and other transnational family characteristics contribute to the well-being and mental health of left-behind children. Further research utilising longitudinal data is needed to better understand the complex and lasting effects on left-behind children.

Job loss at home: children\u2019s school performance during the Great Recession

This paper studies the intergenerational impact of parental job loss on school performance during the Great Recession in Spain. Collecting data through parental surveys in a school in the province of Barcelona, I obtain information about the parental labour market status before and after the Great Recession. I can then link this information to repeated information on their children’s school performance, for a sample of over 300 students. Using individual fixed effects, the estimates show a negative and significant decrease on average grades of around 15% of a standard deviation after father’s job loss. These results are mainly driven by those students whose fathers suffer long unemployment spells. In contrast, the average impact of mother’s job loss on school performance is close to zero and non-significant. The decline in school performance during the Great Recession after father’s job loss, particularly among disadvantaged students, could result in detrimental long-term effects that might contribute to increased inequality. This could be an important and underemphasised cost of recessions.

The impact of household resources on child behavioral problems

This study examined how behavioral problems of school-aged children correlated with their family’s household resources namely parental labour supply, quality of parenting, and their family structure especially focusing on the role of the fatherhood. The estimation results show that a mother continuing to work does not have significant effects on a child’s behavioral problems from when the child is a newborn baby until the child reaches school age, while a father’s unemployment or unstable job situation has been found to have negative impacts on child development. Similarly, a father ‘s involvement in PTA activities and in a child’s upbringing plays a vital part in a child’s development. This study then provides the survey evidence of fatherhood’s great influence and effects on child development. These effects are far more significant than what is currently recognized.

Child Care Markets, Parental Labor Supply, and Child Development

Child Care Markets, Parental Labor Supply, and Child Development

Covid-19 School Closures and Parental Labor Supply in the United States

We examine the role of school closures in contributing to the negative labor market impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collect detailed daily information on school closures at the school-district level, which we merge to individual level data on various employment and socio- demographic characteristics from the monthly Current Population Survey from January 2019 through May 2020. Using a difference-in-differences estimation approach, we gauge how the intensity of school closures affects the labor supply of mothers and fathers of young school-age children. We find evidence of non-negligible labor supply reductions, particularly among mothers. These impacts prove robust to endogeneity checks and persist after accounting for other social-distancing measures in place.

Parental Well-Being in Times of COVID-19 in Germany

We examine the differential effects of COVID-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of school and day care center closures, which may be regarded as a “disruptive exogenous shock” to family life. We make use of a novel representative survey of parental well-being collected in May and June 2020 in Germany, when schools and day care centers were closed but while other measures had been relaxed and new infections were low. In our descriptive analysis, we compare well-being during this period with a pre-crisis period for different groups. In a difference-in-differences design, we compare the change for individuals with children to the change for individuals without children, accounting for unrelated trends as well as potential survey mode and context effects. We find that the crisis lowered the relative well-being of individuals with children, especially for individuals with young children, for women, and for persons with lower secondary schooling qualifications. Our results suggest that public policy measures taken to contain COVID-19 can have large effects on family well-being, with implications for child development and parental labor market outcomes.

Parental Well-Being in Times of Covid-19 in Germany

We examine the differential effects of Covid-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of school and day care center closures, which may be regarded as a "disruptive exogenous shock" to family life. We make use of a novel representative survey of parental well-being collected in May and June 2020 in Germany, when schools and day care centers were closed but while other measures had been relaxed and new infections were low. In our descriptive analysis, we compare well-being during this period with a pre-crisis period for different groups. In a difference-in-differences design, we compare the change for individuals with children to the change for individuals without children, accounting for unrelated trends as well as potential survey mode and context effects. We find that the crisis lowered the relative well-being of individuals with children, especially for individuals with young children, for women, and for persons with lower secondary schooling qualifications. Our results suggest that public policy measures taken to contain Covid-19 can have large effects on family well-being, with implications for child development and parental labor market outcomes.

Time to Grow Up? Adult Children as Determinants of Parental Labor Supply

As children transition to adulthood, do they continue being a major determinant of parental labor supply? To answer this question, we examine the effects of college costs on the labor supply of mothers and fathers by exploiting the roll-out of nine generous state merit aid programs from 1993 to 2004, which made college more affordable. Mothers of college-age children decrease their annual hours of work after the introduction of these state-wide programs, while fathers do not adjust their labor supply. Mothers of college-going children are entirely responsible for the decline in hours of work, where mothers of children who do not go to college experienced no change in hours of work. The decline in labor supply is mainly due to adjustments among married, more educated, and white mothers.

The impact of parental labour migration on left‐behind children's educational and psychosocial outcomes: Evidence from Romania

AbstractMany children grow up with parents working abroad. Social scientists are interested in the scholastic achievement and health of these left‐behind children, in order to better understand the positive and negative aspects of migration for the families in the sending countries. This paper examines the causal effects of parents' migration on the education, physical, and mental health of left‐behind children aged 11 to 15 years in Romania, a country where increasingly more children have parents working abroad. Using data from a unique representative survey carried out in 2007, instrumental variable and bivariate probit estimates have been performed. The paper finds evidence for a significant positive effect of parental migration on children's school performance (reflected in higher grades) and a higher probability of suffering from depression and having health problems more frequently. The study furthermore demonstrates that living in transnational families is more harmful for girls and for those from rural areas.

Child care, parental labor supply and tax revenue

We study the impact of child care for toddlers on the labor supply of mothers and fathers in Norway. For identification, we exploit the staggered expansion across municipalities following a large child care reform from 2002. Our IV-estimates indicate that child care causes an increase in the labor supply of cohabiting mothers who move towards full time employment. Despite this, average taxes paid on the extra income is low, lending little support to the argument that parts of the cost of child care is offset by increased taxes. Meanwhile, we find no impact for fathers.

The managerial approach to the parental labor: Methods and techniques for governance

The managerial approach to the parental labor: Methods and techniques for governance

Democratizing access to higher education in Russia: The consequences of the unified state exam reform

This is the first paper that evaluates the effects of a reform requiring Russian universities to make admission decisions based on the results of a national high-school exam. We show the reform led to a threefold increase in geographic mobility rates among high-school graduates from small cities and towns to start college. This is robust to different techniques, samples, and specifications. The reform was also accompanied by increases in students’ expectations to attend university, parental transfers, and educational expenditures. There is no evidence the reform affected parental labor supply, divorce, and employment outcomes of graduates who did not move.

Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions

Temporary school closures (TSC) represent a major challenge to policymakers across the globe due to their potential impact on instructional time and student achievement. A neglected but equally important question relates to how such closures affect the labor market behavior of parents. This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of temporary school closures on parental labor market behavior, exploiting the prevalence of primary school teacher strikes across time and provinces in Argentina. We find clear evidence that temporary school closures negatively impact the labor market participation of mothers, in particular lower-skilled mothers less attached to the labor force and mothers in dual-income households who face a lower opportunity cost of dropping out of the labor force. This effect translates into a statistically significant and economically meaningful reduction in labor earnings: the average mother whose child is exposed to ten days of TSCs suffers a decline in monthly labor earnings equivalent to 2.92% of the mean. While we do not find any effects among fathers in general, fathers with lower predicted earnings than their spouses also experience negative labor market effects. This suggests that the parental response to TSCs depend, at least in part, on the relative income of each parent. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggest that the aggregate impact of TSCs on annual parental earnings is more than $113 million, and that the average mother would be willing to forego 1.6 months of labor earnings in order to ensure that there are no TSCs while her child is in primary school.

The Theoretical and Methodological Research of Female Employment and It Correlation with Parental Work

The article is devoted to the actual gender aspects of employment. There is a connection between the nature of female employment and a possibility of combining it with the performance of parental functions. The authors clarify the essence of the nature of employment concept, which makes it possible to identify the three main criteria for the typification of employment. It is important for assessing the correlation between the nature of employment and parental labour. This correlation includes such aspects as: a workplace territorial organization, flexibility of labour relations and duration of working day or week. It is proposed to classify the time consumption for performing parental functions on active and passive species. The authors substantiate the use of the magnitude and proportion of the active time spent by a woman for the performance of parental functions as the evaluation indicators of the quality of parental labour. The algorithm for the observation sheets processing is proposed in this article. This algorithm makes it possible to reveal the correlation of the nature of employment according to the proposed typification criteria of the quality of parental functions. The received results will allow to discover the most successful form of productive female employment in further researches and combine work and qualitative performance of parental functions. According to the authors’ hypothesis, remote employment can be a possible form of the productive female employment.

Формирование традиций изучения родительского труда в социологической науке

The paper provides the theoretical and methodological analysis of the traditions which determine the modern principals of research into parental labor. The author notes that the term ‘parental labor’ is popular in contemporary studies, but it remains untraditional for some scientists. To check whether this peculiarity covers the term under review or the idea behind it, the researcher analyzes classical and modern scientific literature from the theoretical and methodological perspective. The analysis shows that although the concept of parental labor has recently become widespread, it has long-standing backgrounds. Classical social and philosophical works laid the foundations for a review of parents’ activities as a type of labor. Further social theories identified specific patterns in the development of parental labor in the new social environment. Summarizing the results of the analysis, the author concluded that the term ‘parental labor’ was not explicitly mentioned in social and economic studies. At the same time, the idea of examining parental practices through the prism of the category of labor is not radically new and continues previous traditions.

Birthright citizenship and parental labor market integration

The introduction of the birthplace principle in the reform of the German citizenship law of 1999 significantly changed the legal environment for new-born children of long-term immigrants. In this study, I examine whether migrant parents adjust their labor market behavior in reaction to this improvement in their family's status and perspectives. I implement a type of difference-in-discontinuities approach to identify possible changes in employment and working hours after the enactment of the reform. In particular, I compare the differences in labor market outcomes between the parents of migrant children born shortly before and after the enactment date with those of children of mixed couples (migrants and Germans) who were unaffected by the reform. The results suggest that birthright citizenship for the child does not affect the labor market behavior of the fathers, but causes some mothers to stay at home and take care of their children during the first years.

Parental Labour Supply Responses to the Abolition of Day Care Fees

This paper provides evidence that low private contributions to highly subsidised day care constrain mothers from working longer hours. We study the effects of a reform that abolished day care fees in Germany on parental labour supply. The reform removed private contributions to highly subsidised day care in the year before children enter primary school. We exploit the staggered reform across states with a difference-in-differences approach and event studies. Although participation in day care is almost universal for preschoolers, we provide evidence that the reform increases the intensity of day care use and the working time of mothers by about 7.1 percent. Single mothers, mothers with no younger children, mothers in denser local labour markets, and highly educated mothers react strongest. We find no evidence for labour supply responses at the extensive margin, and no evidence of responses in paternal labour supply. The effects on maternal labour supply fade-away by the end of primary school as mothers in the control group also gradually increase their labour supply as their children grow older.

Динамика прекаризации родительского труда по сторонам трудового процесса

The structural changes in the transition to a knowledge economy, the increasing global competi-tion, the significant expansion of the service sector, the large-scale use of information and communica-tion technologies, the increasing production and labour market flexibility have led to the new social and economic phenomenon, i. e. labour precarity. Precarity affects all spheres of the economy, includ-ing parental labour (the reproduction of high-quality human capital) that is the main intensive productive factor in the economic development of modern so-ciety. The research analyses the precarity by the parts of the parental labour process. The study is conducted according to the author’s technique based on the index method. In 2010–2017, precarity by the parts of the parental labour process was ob-served in Russia. The organizational, technical and economic facets are the most problematic aspects of parental labour. The study identifies the weak-nesses in the parental labour management which increase its instability and decrease its security. The labour regulation measures by the parts of the la-bour process are proposed to reduce parental labour precarity.