The Intergenerational Effects of Paternal Migration on Schooling and Work : What can We Learn from Children's Time Allocations?

This paper explores the immediate effects of a father's U.S. migration on his children's schooling and work outcomes in Mexico. To get around the endogeneity of paternal migration, I use individual fixed effects and IV estimation where the instrumental variables are based on U.S. city-level employment statistics in two industries popular with Mexican immigrants. Overall, the estimates suggest that children reduce study hours and increase work hours in response to a father's U.S. migration. Decomposing the sample into sex- and age-specific groups shows that the main group driving these results are 12-15 year-old boys. These results are consistent with a story in which the immediate aftermath of a father's migration is one of financial hardship that is borne in large part by relatively young children