Does parental migration affect children’s health in rural India? A fresh look at retrospective data using LASSO Regression Method

The paper analyses India Human Development Survey-II (2011–12) data to discern the effect of parental out-migration on nutritional health status and morbidity among rural children of 0–14 years age. Adaptive LASSO logistic regression, a machine learning technique, was used to select the predictors, and state cluster fixed effect model was used to find the effect of select variables on children’s nutritional health status and morbidity. Results show that although parental migration lowers underweight among accompanied children of returned migrant parents, left-behind children of current migrant parents are found more likely to be underweight than their peers. Also, accompanied children of returned migrant parents are more likely to be affected by diarrhoea than their peers living in the countryside. ARI is found lower among the children left behind by returned migrant parents as well as by current migrant parents. However, children of remittance-recipient households are found to have performed well in terms of stunting among them. Multi-prolonged strategies are required towards mitigating the negative effects of parental migration on - the children.