Left-behind Children in Rural China: Nutrition and Health

Open Access
- Author:
- Xu, Jiahui
- Graduate Program:
- Sociology (MA)
- Degree:
- Master of Arts
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- June 22, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Jennifer Van Hook, Program Head/Chair
Melissa Hardy, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Liying Luo, Committee Member
Michelle Lynn Frisco, Committee Member
Nancy Kay Luke, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Left-behind children in China
BMI
nutrition
health - Abstract:
- In China, massive parental rural-to-urban migration has resulted in many disrupted families and altered the lives of children being left behind in rural communities. While their parents seek jobs with better wages in urban areas, left behind children require other family members, including grandparents and sometimes older children themselves to take on the responsibilities of caregiving. Previous studies have described the left-behind children and documented their disadvantaged status in educational and occupational achievement and higher risk of substance use, lower levels of cognitive development, and poorer performance on short-term and long-term word recall tests. However, research examining general health patterns for rural Asian children is scarce. This study contributes to existing literature by investigating how different family structures due to parental migration stratify patterns of growth associated with a healthy childhood for boys and girls. Using a life course perspective and an accelerated longitudinal design, I test whether children’s age-related growth in body mass index (BMI) provides evidence of cumulative disadvantage in early life course development. I extend the age range used in earlier research to capture these patterns from early childhood through adolescence to assess any growth differences that will be carried into and through the transition to adulthood. In addition, I extend previous research by distinguishing four possible patterns of parental migration—both parents, mother only, father only, or neither parent—rather than two, and I address the timing of the changes in migration status that can occur over this early life course period. Analyzing data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) using multilevel growth curve models allows me to construct biannual sequential time segments averaged across cohorts for up to five repeated observations of children aged 2 to 15 years old during the 2010-2018 period in a more detailed way. Results show that children who were left behind by both parents experienced significantly different nutrition trajectories when compared to other rural children with both parents remaining in the household. Patterns for children who experience the absence of either the father or the mother are less distinctive. Finally, the gap in BMI across migration groups increases with age, especially during children’s adolescence (>=12 years old). Unlike many other developing countries, however, the growth trajectory of BMI for girls lies consistently below, rather than above, that for boys, while in developed countries, the two trajectories generally coincide. Potential implications of these findings for later stages of the life course and future research are discussed.