Does international migration affect children's educational outcomes in home countries? Evidence from Cameroon

Mathias Kuepie, LISER and DIAL

The objective of this study is to analyze the impact of international migration on educational outcomes of left behind households' children in Cameroon. To this end, we use a survey purposely designed to capture the impact of international migration on socioeconomic outcomes. Using propensity matching and weighted regression methods, estimations show that the impact of migration on children's school attendance is far from being positive: while the overall effect is not significant, we highlight a detrimental one when we consider migrants having a parental status before migration. Even remittances do not alleviate this detrimental effect. This result, which is more pronounced for boys than girls, is in line with the family disruption hypothesis put forward in the literature to explain the negative effect of migration on educational outcomes.