The Contribution of Migration to Children’s Family Context

Jenna Nobles, University of California, Los Angeles

Researchers concerned with child well-being increasingly emphasize the role of family structure. A large body of work suggests that the benefits to children raised in a stable household consisting of two biological parents are substantial. Much of this work contrasts children in two-parent households with children living with a single parent following nonmarital fertility, divorce, or death. In many developing societies, however, a common cause of family disruption occurs when one parent leaves the household to work elsewhere for an extended period of time. In this study I characterize children’s family experiences in a setting where labor migration is often a defining feature of family life. I develop multistate life tables for use with recent Mexican data to examine the roles that nonmarital fertility, union disruption and death play with respect children’s experience of parental presence in the household, and add the important element of migration to these estimates.