Abstract
We explore whether older parents of adult children who emigrate experience, in the short term, increases in depressive symptoms and loneliness feelings compared to parents whose children do not migrate. We use data from the first two waves of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, which is a nationally representative sample of 8500 people aged 50 + living in Ireland. To deal with the endogeneity of migration, we apply fixed-effects estimation models and control for a broad range of life events occurring between the two waves. These include the emigration of a child but also events such as bereavement, onset of disease, retirement and unemployment. We find that depressive symptoms and loneliness feelings increase among the parents of migrant children but that the effect is only present for mothers. As the economic burden of mental health problems is high, our findings have potentially significant impacts for migrant-sending regions and countries.
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Notes
To illustrate, the death of a spouse or the sudden onset of a disease for an older parent may have direct instantaneous effects on her mental health and on children’s circumstances. A child who is about to emigrate might decide not to emigrate if a parent suddenly becomes ill or less independent to care for the older parent. Or, alternatively, a child who is unsure on whether to emigrate or not might suddenly decide to emigrate to avoid caring responsibilities. Hence, we control also for physical, demographic and economic changes although our main interest is in investigating the effect of the shock ‘child migration’.
Labour income consists of employee income from the respondent’s main job in the past 12 months and the gross profit from self-employment for self-employed people as well as pre-tax farm income for those engaged in farming. Pension income is made up of both regular and lump sum income from occupational and private schemes. Social welfare payments made to the respondent, income from assets and irregular income are also included in our measure of gross income. To reduce item non-response in relation to income sources, unfolding brackets are used when respondents refuse or say that they ‘do not know’ the relevant amount. If respondents do not provide a point estimate and also do not provide a banded a value, we use hot-deck imputation techniques to impute the relevant amount. We use the hotdeckvar algorithm in STATA 12 (Schonlau 2005) and replace missing values with values randomly selected from donor observations. TILDA also includes a single comprehensive question about net household income. Unfortunately, because the phrasing of the question differs between the two waves, we cannot control for changes in household income in our model.
Social support is measured with the following three items: How much do they really understand the way you feel about things? How much can you rely on them if you have a serious problem? How much can you open up to them if you need to talk about your worries? Relationship strain is measured with the following four items: How much do they make too many demands on you? How much do they criticise you? How much do they let you down when you are counting on them? How much do they get on your nerves? Possible responses for each type of relationship are ‘A lot’ (coded as 3), ‘Some’ (coded as 2), ‘A little’ (coded as 1) or ‘Not at all’ (coded as 0). The social support scale ranges from 0 (no support) to 36 (extreme support); the relationship strain scale ranges from 0 (no strain) to 45 (extreme strain).
The sample used in the fixed-effects model is smaller than 3652 as it excludes parents who participated at wave 1 but dropped out by wave 2, due to death or other attrition; parents who participated at wave 2 but had missing values in one or more of the variables used in the analysis; and parents aged 76 or more at wave 2.
The corresponding figures for mothers are 6.8 (7.7); for fathers they are 4.8 (6.3).
Results are available on request.
As Wooldridge (2006, p. 488) points out, although time-constant variables cannot be included themselves in a fixed-effects model, they can be interacted with variables that change over time.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Editor and three anonymous referees for their insightful comments. Irene Mosca is supported by a Health Research Board of Ireland grant (ICE/2011/7) under the Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement programme. TILDA is funded by Atlantic Philanthropies, the Irish Government Department of Health and Children and Irish Life and Permanent plc.
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Appendix
Appendix
In the fixed-effects models presented in the paper, we restricted our sample to parents all of whose children were living in Ireland at wave 1. We did this based on the argument that the analysis of this group would give the cleanest possible estimate of the impact of children’s emigration on the mental health of older parents.
In Table 14, we present results of the fixed-effects model in which the (standardised) change in CES-D is the dependent variable, but we expand the sample and the categories of parents affected by migration. The sample now includes all parents participating at both wave 1 and wave 2. This implies that, in addition to the earlier group, parents who had a child abroad at wave 1 are also included. We include two indicators for whether a parent experienced (i) child emigration and (ii) child return to Ireland between the two survey waves. Parents who did not see a child emigrate or return between the two waves are included in the reference category.
The results of Table 14 show that we no longer find statistically significant results when we expand the analysis. Parents seeing a second or third child emigrate must not suffer the same impact as when the first child goes. Perhaps there is even some mental relief if one child emigrates and joins the earlier-emigrating child. The parent may also be experiencing a weakening in the concern for the first child if that child is overcoming initial difficulties often experienced by immigrants. For the parents who see a child return, the non-significant result could potentially arise from opposing outcomes—happiness on the part of some parents to have a child back home versus sadness if return arose due to a failure in the host country.
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Mosca, I., Barrett, A. The impact of adult child emigration on the mental health of older parents. J Popul Econ 29, 687–719 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-015-0582-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-015-0582-8