Parental Migration and Children's Education in Mexico: How Important is Child Age at the Time of Parent's Migration?

Francisca M. Antman, University of Colorado at Boulder

What are the long-term effects of parental migration on child education? Does child age at the time of parental migration play a role in the outcome? This paper uses a family fixed-effects regression model to get around the endogeneity of parental migration and suggests that pushing a father's U.S. migration earlier in a child's life leads to an increase in a child’s educational attainment—by as much as two years if that migration is undertaken before the child’s birth. These results are consistent with a story in which U.S. migration enables families to save for their children's educations and/or a situation in which the experience of U.S. migration translates to increased investments in children's educations. These findings also suggest that policies aimed at targeting migrant workers should generally promote migration before the birth of children over migration later in life.