Does internal parental migration affect child school participation and work in Indonesia?

Abstract

This study aims to analyse how internal parental migration influences school participation and work for children aged 10–15 years in Indonesia as measured by four categories, namely, (a) children attending school, (b) working children, (c) children attending school and working and (d) children who do not attend school and do not work (idle). The method used in this study is a multinomial logit model, while the data used is from the 2015 Inter-Census Population Survey (SUPAS) provided by Indonesian Central Board of Statistics (BPS). The results show that parental internal migration generally leads to a reduction in school participation rates and an increase in work participation rates among the children of migrant parents. The impact is greater when the mother migrates. However, the negative impact of parental internal migration on children’s participation in education and child labour decreases as the duration of migration increases. In addition, this study also provides some important findings regarding the important aspects that can affect child school participation and work, including the quality of parents’ work after migration, parents’ education, child’s age, family size and family welfare, including the quality of the environment where the children live.

Keywords

• Internal migration
• child education
• child labour
• SUPAS
• Grace Spencer, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
• Labour Economics