The impact of parental migration on left-behind children’s vision health in rural China

BMC Public Health

Research

Hongyu Guan¹  Kang Du²  Tianli Yang³  Jin Zhao⁴ 

[1] Center for Experimental Economics in Education, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China;School of Economics, Xi’an University of Finance and Economics, Xi’an, China;School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China;School of Marxism, Xi’an University of Finance and Economics, Xi’an, China;

关键词: Parental migration;    Left-behind children;    Vision health;    Myopia;    Eyeglasses;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-022-14962-4

 received in 2022-10-06, accepted in 2022-12-28,  发布年份 2022

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundParental migration is an important factor affecting left-behind children’s health. However, few studies have addressed the effect of parental migration on children’s vision health in China. To fill the gap, this study aimed to assess the impact of parental migration on left-behind children’s vision health and to explore the possible mechanisms of the effect.MethodsData were obtained from the baseline survey of the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), which included over 10,000 junior high school students. This study used myopia, the most common vision problem among junior high school students, and tried to analyze whether myopia was corrected with eyeglasses as indicator variables of vision health. The impact of parental migration on vision health was assessed using an instrumental variables approach.ResultsThe results show that parental migration reduced the likelihood of myopia in left-behind children and decreased the possibility of myopic left-behind children being corrected. This result passed a series of robustness tests. The mechanism analysis indicated that compared to non-left-behind children, left-behind children spent more time on outdoor activities and less time on after-school classes, reducing their risk of being myopic. Further, because left-behind children live apart from their parents, their myopia problem is more difficult for parents to notice, and left-behind children are less likely to inform their parents of their myopia than non-left-behind children actively. This helps to explain why left-behind children have a lower correction rate with eyeglasses.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that parental migration, while not increasing the prevalence of myopia in left-behind children, has led to inequity in myopic left-behind children’s correction. Given the severe consequences of uncorrected myopia, action is required to enhance the correction rate of myopic left-behind children.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2022