Lu Yao, Treiman Donald J
Department of Sociology, Columbia University, 501 Knox Hall, New York, NY 10027,
Soc Forces. 2011 Jun 1;89(4):1119-1143. doi: 10.1093/sf/89.4.1119.
This paper extends previous work on family structure and children's education by conceptualizing migration as a distinct form of family disruption that reduces parental input but brings substantial economic benefits through remittances. It examines the multiple and countervailing effects of migration on schooling in the context of substantial migration and limited educational opportunities for Blacks in South Africa. The receipt of remittances substantially increases Black children's school attendance, but has no such effect for Whites. The effect for Blacks is in part attributable to improved household economic conditions that increase household educational spending and reduce the demand for child labor. We also find a negative effect of parental absence due to migration, but it is largely cushioned by inflows of remittances. Sensitivity analyses using propensity score methods and contextual fixed-effect modeling suggest that the beneficial effect of remittances is relatively robust. We find further that remittances help ameliorate inter-familial socioeconomic inequality in schooling. Finally, we evaluate possible temporal changes and show that the positive and equalizing effects of remittances persisted during and after the apartheid regime. We conclude that labor migration and remittances, as institutionalized family strategies adopted by many Blacks, help reconfigure structural opportunities in the educational stratification process in South Africa.
本文通过将移民概念化为一种独特的家庭破裂形式，扩展了先前关于家庭结构与儿童教育的研究。这种家庭破裂形式减少了父母的投入，但通过汇款带来了可观的经济利益。本文考察了在南非大量移民且黑人受教育机会有限的背景下，移民对学校教育产生的多重且相互抵消的影响。汇款的接收显著提高了黑人儿童的入学率，但对白人儿童则没有这种影响。对黑人的这种影响部分归因于家庭经济状况的改善，这增加了家庭的教育支出并减少了对童工的需求。我们还发现，移民导致的父母缺席有负面影响，但汇款的流入在很大程度上缓冲了这种影响。使用倾向得分法和情境固定效应模型进行的敏感性分析表明，汇款的有益影响相对稳健。我们进一步发现，汇款有助于缓解家庭间在学校教育方面的社会经济不平等。最后，我们评估了可能的时间变化，并表明汇款的积极和均衡效应在种族隔离制度期间及之后都持续存在。我们得出结论，劳动力移民和汇款作为许多黑人采用的制度化家庭策略，有助于在南非教育分层过程中重新配置结构性机会。
