Schmeer Kammi
Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, Columbus 43210-1222, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2009 Oct;69(8):1281-6. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.07.030. Epub 2009 Aug 21.
Little research to date has assessed the importance of the presence of fathers in the household for protecting child health, particularly in developing country contexts. Although divorce and non-marital childbearing are low in many developing countries, migration is a potentially important source of father absence that has yet to be studied in relation to child health. This study utilizes prospective, longitudinal data from Mexico to assess whether father absence due to migration is associated with increased child illness in poor, rural communities. Rural Mexico provides a setting where child illness is related to more serious health problems, and where migration is an important source of father absence. Both state- and individual-level fixed effects regression analyses are used to estimate the relationship between father absence due to migration and child illness while controlling for unobserved contextual and individual characteristics. The state-level models illustrate that the odds of children being ill are 39% higher for any illness and 51% higher for diarrhea when fathers are absent compared with when fathers are present in the household. The individual-level fixed effects models support these findings, indicating that, in the context of rural Mexico, fathers may be important sources of support for ensuring the healthy development of young children.
迄今为止，几乎没有研究评估家庭中父亲的存在对保护儿童健康的重要性，尤其是在发展中国家的背景下。尽管在许多发展中国家，离婚和非婚生育的比例较低，但移民是导致父亲缺席的一个潜在重要因素，而这一点尚未针对儿童健康进行研究。本研究利用来自墨西哥的前瞻性纵向数据，评估因移民导致的父亲缺席是否与贫困农村社区中儿童疾病增加有关。墨西哥农村地区的情况是，儿童疾病与更严重的健康问题相关，而且移民是导致父亲缺席的一个重要因素。在控制未观察到的背景和个体特征的同时，使用州级和个体层面的固定效应回归分析来估计因移民导致的父亲缺席与儿童疾病之间的关系。州级模型表明，与父亲在家时相比，父亲缺席时孩子患病的几率对于任何疾病都高出39%，对于腹泻则高出51%。个体层面的固定效应模型支持了这些发现，表明在墨西哥农村地区，父亲可能是确保幼儿健康发展的重要支持来源。
