Abstract:

Education is an increasingly important factor in population migration, and there are groups migrated due to education. However, the impact of migration on students’ academic ability is not consistent. On the basis of clarifying migrant children, left-behind children, immigrant children, and immigrant children of rural migrant workers, this paper divided the groups of proactive-education migrating and passive-education migrating according to whether the main purpose of the migration involved education or not. And then, it explored the effect and mechanism of proactive-education migrating on academic ability. Based on the tracking data of China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this paper found that proactive-education migrating could significantly improve students’ academic ability. Compared with different control groups, the positive effect of proactive-education migrating on the academic ability ranged from 0.06 to 0.08 standard scores. It also had a direct or indirect impact on academic ability through parent educational expectation and parent involvement. In addition, proactive-education migrating had a heterogeneous effect across different hukou groups and different inflow places. This paper attempts to separate the positive components of the migration effect to justify migration, and to provide migrating strategies for families with different backgrounds.

Key words: migrant children, proactive-education migrating, academic ability, parent educational expectation, parent involvement