International Out-Migration and the Health of Left-Behind Adolescents in Nepal
Dirgha Ghimire1, Amit Anshumali2, Emily Treleaven1
1University of Michigan, 2University of Chicago
Several studies have examined the effect of out- migration on physical and mental health of left behind children primarily focuses on children under five. However, there is a paucity of research on how the international out-migration will affect the adolescents’ health and well-being. International labour out-migration is a major source of income for majority of households in low income countries where a large proportion of children enter adolescence thin, stunted, anemic, and/or micro-nutrient deficient. Using the Chitwan Valley Family Study  data we investigate the association between household members international out-migration and nutritive health of adolescents in Nepal. Our major contribution of this study is the exclusive focus on the adolescent age group, the deployment of several health outcome measures related to stunting, and thinness. Our findings reveled that household members’ international migration has strong positive statistically significant association with adolescents’ health, net of their individual and household background characteristics.