Redefining Roles: Household Migration and Childhood Labor

Migration by some household members has significant economic, social, and psychological impacts both on migrants and on members of the household who do not migrate, especially children. This study examines one dimension of children’s experiences of migration by exploring its associations with their time use, focusing on the sending context of Nepal, a country of high levels of primarily circular migration. Drawing on data from the Family Migration and Early Life Outcomes project, this study uses ordinary least squares regression to examine variation in time spent on household labor among children ages 5 to 17, comparing children in households with no migrants, households with only male migrants, and households with female migrants. We find that children in households with female migrants spend less time on household labor than children in households without migrants, with this association robust to controls for child and household characteristics and migrant remittances. Children in households with male migrants spend more time on household chores, but the magnitude and significance of this association vary across specifications. These results highlight migration’s complex associations with children’s time use and well-being, pushing migration scholarship toward a broader conceptualization of migration that incorporates multiple migrants and outcomes across multiple dimensions and domains.