BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.6, No.2, 2020 886 

 

 

 

 

The Influence of Parent-Child Separation on the 

Development of Children: Evidence from the Survey 

of Migrant Children in Beijing 

By Li, B. & Yin, L. 

Correspondence to:  Li, B. Email: libobnu@163.com 

ASED on a survey of 2,367 fourth-grade migrant children in Beijing’s 

functional development zone (2016-2017), this article explores the im-

pact of parent-child separation on children’s development from three dimen-

sions: academic performance, non-cognitive development, and physical 

health. The brief is as follows: 

 The research focuses on the following issues: First, will the separa-

tion of parent and child have an impact on children’s academic per-

formance, non-cognitive abilities, and physical health? Second, is 

there any difference in the impact of separation between father and 

mother? Third, whether this difference will be heterogeneous based 

on the gender of children. 

 Data source and variable description: The survey follows the princi-

ple of three-stage cluster sampling. The surveyed students were all 

from fourth grade of primary school and are at the same education 

level, so the student development indicators are horizontally compa-

rable. The core variables of this study include core explanatory vari-

ables and explained variables. Among them, the core explanatory 

variables are dummy variables of parent-child separation. Including 

separation from father and mother. The core explained variables in-

clude academic performance, non-cognitive development, and insti-

tutional health. 

 Research results: 

i. The impact of separation from parent-child on children’s 

academic performance: separation from mother has a 

stronger impact on children’s academic performance than 

separation from father. 

ii. The impact of parent-child separation on children’s non-

cognitive abilities: separation from mothers has no signifi-

cant impact on non-cognitive abilities in all dimensions; 

however, separation from the father has a significant nega-

B 



 

Vol.6, No.2, 2020 887 

tive impact on children’s self-esteem, self-control, interper-

sonal communication, school adaptation, leadership, and 

cooperation. 

iii. The impact of parent-child separation on children’s physical 

health: separation from mothers has a significantly greater 

impact on children’s physical health than separation from 

fathers. 

iv. Analysis of the heterogeneity of the impact of parent-child 

separation on children’s development: parent-child separa-

tion differs a lot in gender; for boys, separation from moth-

ers has a significant negative impact on their academic per-

formance, but separation from fathers has no significant im-

pact on male academic performance, while for girls, separa-

tion from their mothers significantly affects their English 

scores, and separation from their fathers significantly af-

fects their mathematics scores; but separation from their 

mothers has no significant impact on girls’ Mathematics 

and Chinese scores. Similarly, separation from fathers has 

no significant impact on girls’ language and English scores. 

 Conclusions and policy recommendations: 

i. Change the misconception of “pay attention to money, 

not the time” that exists in progress of children’s growth, 

and do a good job in the important duty of guiding chil-

dren. 

ii. Schools and teachers should concentrate on students who 

have separated parent-child, ask more about their prob-

lems and difficulties in study and life, and promptly 

guide and communicate; at the same time, the school 

should establish relevant psychological counseling insti-

tutions or groups to promptly discover and ease the psy-

chological problems of students. 

iii. Relevant departments should gradually abolish the dis-

criminative policies related to household registration di-

vision on employment, education, and medical, so as to 

reduce the occurrence of parent-child separation from the 

source. 

 

Source: China Economics of Education Review, 2019; 4(6): 93-108.