The paper studies the effects of mothers’ migration from rural to urban areas on children’s nutritional status under 5 years old based on the data of Chinese Food and Nutrition Surveillance System. To control the possible endogeneity, propensity score matching (PSM) method is employed. It is shown that nutritional status of children with mothers migrating to urban areas is lower than these with mother employed in hometown significantly because of mother’s caring defect. On the other hand, there is no significant difference in nutrition status between children with mother employed in agricultural sector and non-agricultural sector in hometown, though their incomes are different significantly. The result implies that marginal effect of income on children’s nutritional status is decreasing; however, it becomes more important of mother’s caring for children’s nutritional status.
URL : https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=IAFFE2013&paper_id=29