Essays on migration, entrepreneurship, and parental investment

Type Thesis or Dissertation - Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Title Essays on migration, entrepreneurship, and parental investment
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2014
URL https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/49632/Qing_Wang.pdf?sequence=1
Abstract
This dissertation studies migration, entrepreneurship, and parental investment. Migration for economic opportunity may both benefit and burden left-behind family members. Chapter 1 examines how migration affects the mother-child and brother-sister distributions of time in market work, agricultural work, home production, caregiving, and leisure, as well as the boy-girl allocation of formal education time. Controlling for family heterogeneity in the level as well as allocation of time use, this chapter finds robust evidence of strong shifts in the allocations of time spent in formal education across similarly aged boy-girl pairs and in housework between mothers and daughters in association with migration. The findings may help policymarkers to evaluate the benefit and burden of international migration along the time use dimension that has been relatively understudied. There has been evidence on the entrepreneurial behavior of migrants in receiving countries or after they return to home countries, but little research on the entrepreneurship of left-behind persons when migrants are still abroad. Using data from the Mexican Family Life Survey, Chapter 2 examines the effects of ongoing migration on the entrepreneurship of left-behind family members. Striking evidence shows that migration stimulates the entrepreneurship of leftbehind members through improved financial status. The preferred estimates indicate that having migrant family members increases an individual’s rate of participation in entrepreneurship by at least 50 percent relative to the mean. The analysis also demonstrates the differential migration effects and differential motives pertinent to becoming new entrepreneurs by gender. These findings have profound implications for the empowerment of women and how public policies such as microcredit may promote entrepreneurship through the relaxation of financial constraints.

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