Working Paper

Young Lives Working Paper 104. Should Parents Work Away from or Close to Home? : The Effect of Temporary Parental Absence on Child Poverty and Children’s Time Use in Vietnam

author(s) Nguyen Viet Cuong, Vu Hoang Linh.
from UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)
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themes
regions
  • South-Eastern Asia
  • Asia
  • World
citation

Nguyen Viet Cuong; Vu Hoang Linh. Young Lives Working Paper 104. Should Parents Work Away from or Close to Home? : The Effect of Temporary Parental Absence on Child Poverty and Children’s Time Use in Vietnam. Young Lives, Department of International Development at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK (2013) 34 pp. ISBN 978-1-909403-17-8

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Abstract

Working away from home might bring higher earnings than working near home. However, the absence of parents due to work can have unexpected effects on children. This paper examines the effects of the temporary absence of parents on the well-being of children aged between 5 and 8 years old in Vietnam, using indicators of household poverty, per capita consumption expenditure, and children’s time allocation. The paper relies on OLS and fixed effects regression and panel data from the Young Lives surveys in 2007 and 2009. It finds a positive correlation between parental absence and per capita expenditure. Parental absence tends to increase per capita expenditure on food rather than non-food expenditure. Regarding the way children spend their time, there are no statistically significant effects of parental absence

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