Chinese Left-behind Women and Children: should they pay for the rural labors ’ leaving

Abstract

Abstract. This paper studies the family accompanying behavior of rural migrants in China. It analyzes how the working distance and family population structure affect their spouse and children accompany with them. The working distance and the family population structure exert remarkable efforts to enhance the singleness of rural migrants working alone. We show that the longer working distance the more probability induces the rural migrants to leave home without spouse and children accompany. We also find that the large family surplus population increases the possibility that the spouse and children accompany with them. In particular, this study also indicates that spouse and children accompanying have been gradually improved in recent years in China. Although children accompanying is lagged compare to spouse accompanying, both spouse and child accompanying is increasingly becoming an important transition model of Chinese rural migrants ’ permanent migration. Besides, the paper illustrates that the employment training and urban education opportunity equity are vital steps to rural migrants ’ permanent migration