Seasonal Migration and Early Childhood Development in Nicaragua

1. Seasonal Migration and Early Childhood Development in Nicaragua Karen Macours (SAIS-Johns Hopkins) and Renos Vakis (World Bank)

2. Motivation • Evidence of remittances and permanent migration on: • Income: McKenzie et al. (2006) + Taylor et al. (2005) + • Poverty: Lopez-Cordova and Olmedo (2006) + • Schooling: Yang (2006): +, McKenzie and Rapoport (2005): - • Health expenditures: Amuedo-Dorantes and Pozo (2005) + • Infant mortality: Hildebrand and McKenzie (2005) – • Birthweights: Duryea et al. (2005) +

3. Motivation • Still, most studies either explicitly focus on permanent migration or do not distinguish seasonal from permanent migration, even if both determinants and effects might be very different • Seasonal migration • Traditionally important strategy for both income diversification and risk coping in many developing countries • South-south movements becoming very important

4. Motivation • Seasonal migration and human capital accumulation • Temporary absence of parents can have potential important consequences for the cognitive development and long-term human capital accumulation of children left behind • Emerging literature on early childhood development (ECD) emphasizes the role of parenting (e.g. Behrman, Cheng and Todd, 2004; Gertler and Fernald, 2004; Paxson and Schady, 2006) • Given that absence of parents is arguably the most extreme form of lack of parenting, this would suggest a potential strong negative effect of migration on early childhood development • Little is understood about potential trade-off of seasonal migration between parenting (stimulation) and income (nutrition, health)

5. Motivation • Determinants/Correlates of Cognitive Development • Nutrition • Stimulation • Home inputs • Micro-nutrients • Health • Parent’s socio-economic status • Pre-school programs => Impact of seasonal migration a priori unknown

6. Motivation • Nicaragua context • Border region in North of Nicaragua • Shock-prone area with mainly subsistence agriculture (corn and beans) • 50 % of households rely on seasonal migration to complement and diversify income: • 20% of household income • Fathers (41%), mothers (8%) and other members (13%) migrate • Children typically stay behind (in care of family) • On average 3 months • Majority to other countries in Central America (56%) • Focus on children of pre-school ages for whom direct parental care and stimulation is arguably the most important • Permanent migration (appears to be) much more limited

7. Research questions (and answers) 1) Are children of seasonal migrants disadvantaged in terms of ECD outcomes? • Yes 2) Is there a trade-off between increased migration income and temporary absence of household members for children’s ECD outcomes? • Mothers’ seasonal migration has a positive effect on ECD outcomes • No significant effect for other household members (including fathers) 3) What are the mechanisms and channels by which mothers’ seasonal migration protects children’ ECD outcomes? • Income gains: change in intra-household resource allocation and bargaining position of mothers inducing higher investments on children (e.g. nutrition and health) • Stimulation potentially compensated by alternative care (abuelita, ECD programs)

8. Methodology 1) Correlations between migration and ECD • Cognitive development : TVIP • Anthropometric measures 2) IV estimates to analyze relationship between migration and ECD by exploring seasonal migrant patterns 3) Explore alternative hypotheses to understand the trade-off between income and stimulus

9. Data • More than 4000 households from 6 municipalities, targeted for poverty and vulnerability to droughts (part of a CCT pilot) • Information on 1800 children (out of which 1500 are between 3-7 years) whose parents are the household head • Outcome indicators • TVIP (Spanish version of PPVT) for children 3-7 • Tests of receptive vocabulary (recognition of pictures of objects and situations based on common and gradually less common stimulus words • Predictor of income and wages • Standardized on Spanish-speakers in Mexico and Puerto Rico • Alternatively: internally standardized • Anthropometrics (for children up to 5)

10. Q1. Are children of seasonal migrants disadvantaged in terms of ECD outcomes? Figure 1 – TVIP scores by age and seasonal migration status

11. Q1. Are children of seasonal migrants disadvantaged in terms of ECD outcomes? Figure 2 - % of children that are stunted: by seasonal migration status

12. Q2. Is there a trade-off between increased migration income and temporary absence of household members for children’ ECD outcomes? • Explore heterogeneity in seasonal migration patterns

13. Q2. Is there a trade-off between increased migration income and temporary absence of household members for children’ ECD outcomes? • Instrument seasonal migration with household shocks • 48% of mother, 23 % of fathers, and 37% of others that migrated do not migrate every year • Shocks are correlated with seasonal migration • What about the exclusion restrictions? • Over-identification test • Additional controls • Would bias the results downwards (e.g. shocks might negatively effect ECD through direct effect on consumption) => Underestimation of seasonal migration effect

14. Q2. Is there a trade-off between increased migration income and temporary absence of household members for children’ ECD outcomes? Table 4: Seasonal Migration and ECD: IV estimates

15. Q3. What are the mechanisms and channels by which mothers’ seasonal migration protects children’ ECD outcomes? • Income, empowerment and intra-household bargaining • Seasonal migrant women contribute more to household income • Intra-household bargaining might be shifted towards women • Improve investments on children’s human capital (e.g. through better nutrition and health) • Supporting evidence 1 • Non significant results when we include all children in our sample, irrespective of whether they are children of the household head (Table 4, specification 5) • Suggests that seasonal migration decisions in nuclear households (and to that extent intra-household resource allocation) driven by different factors than in extended (often multigenerational) households

16. Q3. What are the mechanisms and channels by which mothers’ seasonal migration protects children’ ECD outcomes? • Supporting evidence 2 • TVIP scores are positively correlated with household consumption • The relationship is stronger for households with seasonal migrant mothers • Consistent with increased women’s empowerment and higher investment in children Figure 4 – TVIP, Seasonal Migration, Mothers and Wealth

17. Q3. What are the mechanisms and channels by which mothers’ seasonal migration protects children’ ECD outcomes? • Stimulation and alternative childcare • Existing childcare within the household? • important to account for family members that do not migrate, and might become responsible for care-giving during the migration episodes • effect of migration itself might depend on whether childcare is taken over by other adult household members who might provide similar levels of parenting and/or stimulus • Specification 4 (Table 4) excludes all children from households where there is an adult female household member • No change in results, suggesting that having an alternative caregiver in the household might not be key for ECD reinforcing effect of mothers

18. Q3. What are the mechanisms and channels by which mothers’ seasonal migration protects children’ ECD outcomes? • Stimulation and alternative childcare • Childcare outside the household - the “abuelita” story from field observations • Mothers typically leave the children in care of a grandmother or other family member • The children become temporary members of the other household • Since the cash income of the other household is not affected by the migration, access to nutrition and care might be more constant • Fathers’ seasonal migration • Temporary income shock • Mother’s care might decrease if she is forced to look for a cash income during the father’s absence • Social norms prevent mothers to place children in another household during the father’s absence when mothers are still present in the community. • Our data do not allow analyzing these hypotheses

19. Q3. What are the mechanisms and channels by which mothers’ seasonal migration protects children’ ECD outcomes? • Income and stimulus as complementary inputs • Stimulus might be important for early childhood development, but only if the child has reached a minimum nutritional threshold • Given high levels of malnutrition, lack of stimulus might not have strong effects as long as nutrition is severely constrained (Figure 4) • Seasonal migration income of mothers might then be a pre-condition for early childhood development through stimulus

20. Q3. What are the mechanisms and channels by which mothers’ seasonal migration protects children’ ECD outcomes? • How to test this hypothesis formally? • Data includes information on an ECD and stimulation program (PAININ) whose specific goal is to provide stimulus to young children • 39 % of the pre-school children in our sample have participated in PAININ • Information on program placement (targeting rules) and determinants of self-selection • Apply matching methods to measure impact of program and separate income from stimulation effects

21. Q3. What are the mechanisms and channels by which mothers’ seasonal migration protects children’ ECD outcomes? • Striking complementarity between this stimulus program and household consumption • TVIP scores of children from households in PAININ higher than those not • Differences much smaller for children in the lowest consumption quintiles (nutrition constraint binding)

22. Q3. What are the mechanisms and channels by which mothers’ seasonal migration protects children’ ECD outcomes? • Stronger if we look at the relationship between Painin and TVIP scores for children of seasonal migrant and non-migrant mothers

23. Summary • Negative correlation between ECD and migration • After instrumenting seasonal migration with exogenous shocks • Mother’s seasonal migration has a significant positive effect on ECD outcomes, suggesting that the positive income effect might be larger than potential lack of parenting effect • No significant effects of fathers’ or others’ migration on ECD • Exploring the income versus stimulus trade-off • Income effect driven by changes in intra-household resource allocation and bargaining • Stimulus effect may be partially underestimated by “abuelita” effect • Potential complementarities between income and stimulus • Stimulus less important at low levels of malnutrition • Seasonal migration income of mothers might be a pre-condition for ECD through stimulus

24. Implications • On migration • Intra-household dynamics imply that social costs related to seasonal migration by women are not ex-ante obvious • Seasonal migration by women not necessarily bad • Food for thought for policy makers • On early childhood development • Women’s control over cash income might be important • Potential importance of targeting cash transfers to women

25. Next steps • Explore further • intra-household bargaining • ongoing randomized evaluation will allow addressing some of these ideas • magnitude of cash transfer similar to cash brought back • initial IE results on empowerment consistent (e.g. intra-household decision making etc) • …

26. Instruments? First stage