Is International Migration Always Good for Left Behind Households Members? Evidence from Children Education in Cameroon
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12503 |
Is International Migration Always Good for
Left Behind Households Members? Evidence
from Children Education in Cameroon
Mathias Ku
epi
e*
ABSTRACT
This study contributes to the debate about the net gain of international migration on develop-
ment by analyzing the effect of migration on school attendance of children of left-behind
households in Cameroon. A quick literature review shows that migration can impact children’s
education through two main channels: the “budget constraint”channel and the “family disrup-
tion”channel. Based on this literature review, we develop a theoretical framework to highlight
the underlying mechanisms. In order to empirically assess the two channels, we use a survey
designed for this purpose. Results highlight a detrimental effect of migration on boys’school
attendance, whereas girls are not affected. This negative effect is mainly explained by parental
and recent migrations. Thus our empirical results provide evidence on the fact that, in the
Cameroonian context, international migration does not always positively influence develop-
ment, at least as far as children’s education is concerned.
INTRODUCTION
International migration, in the context of globalization, is becoming increasingly important and is
giving rise to intense debate about its positive or negative consequences on the development of
emigration countries. It is important to mention that the debate is also intensive in host countries
about the positive or negative contribution of immigrants to the economic growth and the equilib-
rium of the welfare system.
Negative consequences of brain drain are characterized by the fact that the developed countries
attract the most educated young people from poor countries and hence jeopardize the development
of the latter. As far as Cameroon is concerned, this assertion can be supported by the fact that
about 15 per cent of young people with a university degree are out of the country, mainly in Eur-
ope and the USA (Docquier and Rapoport, 2008). In some key sectors like research, science and
technology, the situation is worse: 88 per cent of Cameroonian researchers are outside Cameroon
(Docquier and Rapoport, 2008). But if international migration, through brain drain, can jeopardize
the development of home countries, it can also generate positive effects through the so-called
“brain gain”. That is, migrants can gain experience and money and in turn contribute to the devel-
opment of their country of origin through technological/knowledge transfer (see Liu et al., 2010 for
the case of China) and through remittances (World Bank, 2011). In the case of Cameroon, remit-
tances are still relatively low: US $244 million in 2015, which is less than 1 per cent of GDP. For
Senegal, for instance, it is ten times greater (World Bank, 2011, 2016; Kusumawardhani, 2012).
* Agence Francßaise de D
eveloppement, Paris
doi: 10.1111/imig.12503
©2018 The Authors
International Migration ©2018 IOM
International Migration Vol. 56 (6) 2018
ISS N 00 20- 7985 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
But given that remittances are transferred from individual to individual, they can be more efficient
than other financial transfers like international development aid.
In this study, we are interested in the impact of migration on the educational outcomes of
children in left-behind households. This issue is very important since households in Cameroon,
as in other poor countries, face important budget constraints and at the same time cannot rely
on a public social redistribution system to cover education costs. Intuitively, we would assume
that being able to rely on remittances of relatives living abroad in a more favourable economic
environment can help relax household resource constraints. But at the macro level, the literature
review on the effects of migration and remittances on child educational outcomes shows mixed
results. While some studies show that children from households benefiting from remittances are
more successful in school (Cox Edwards and Ureta, 2003; Borraz, 2005; Acosta, 2006; Calero
et al., 2009), others lead to more nuanced and even opposite results, finding that children are
more successful in households without migration (Antman, 2011; McKenzie and Rapoport,
2011; Kusumawardhani, 2012). These counterintuitive results are explained by the fact that
migration has a “depressive”effect on household organization, which is not necessarily counter-
balanced by r. In some cases, households with migrants, anticipating low returns to migrant
education, may put less value on education than non-migrants households (McKenzie and Rapo-
port, 2011).
Our objective in this study is to assess to what extent households with migrants do or do not take
advantage in order to enhance the child educational capital in the special case of Cameroon. As we
previously mentioned, although Cameroon does not belong to the African group of countries with
a long tradition of massive international migration, the phenomenon is increasing (World Bank,
2011) and concerns mostly educated young people with significant remittance potential. Until now,
its impact on household outcomes has not yet been assessed. Our aim is to contribute to filling this
evidence gap, especially where education is concerned. To achieve this objective, we make use of
an original, new survey called “Survey on impact of South-South”. Although the main objective of
the survey was to assess “South-South migration”, the sample was designed to make it possible
also to analyse South-North migration (see Section 4).
“The impact of migration on Cameroon’s Development”survey, conducted in 2012 by the
Observatory on Migrations of African and Caribbean Organization, in collaboration with the
Institute for Demographic Training and Research (IFORD) of Yaounde, was purposely designed
to include enough migrant households to enable the assessment of the impact of migration on
various household outcomes, including children’s education (see Section 4). Rigorously assessing
the impact of migration on household outcomes is not a simple exercise, because of possible
selectivity of the migration process. Therefore it is important to use appropriate econometric
methods to properly evaluate the impact of migration and remittances on household outcomes.
In this study, we use the propensity score matching (with the estimation of the matching score
based on pre-migration or constant variables) and weighted regressions to alleviate biases in
estimations.
Results show that the impact of migration on child school attendance is far from positive: while
its overall effect is not significant, we highlight a detrimental effect of migration on boys’school
attendance. This negative effect is mainly explained by parental migration and is present only in
households whose member migrated less than 3 years ago.
The remainder of this study is organized as follows: in the second section, we present the context
and the literature review of the impact of migration and remittances on education outcomes. Based
on this literature review, we formalize a theoretical framework which helps to explain the underly-
ing mechanisms (Section 3). The fourth section is devoted to the methodology adopted (survey and
data description, empirical estimation strategy). The fifth part presents the results of estimations,
and the last one concludes.
Left behind households 121
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