Zhang Dandan's team: Does the left-behind experience of left-behind children increase the likelihood of adult crime?

Left-behind children are about 1.8 to 2.5 percentage points more likely to be incarcerated as adults than non-left-behind children. Low levels of education and risk-taking behaviour are both important predictors of prison sentences in adulthood, which together explain more than half of the high crime rates among left-behind children, with educational attainment having the most significant effect

"Using data from a randomly selected sample of inmates and migrant workers, we found that the absence of parental care in childhood due to the absence of parental care due to the absence of paternal care due to the absence of paternal care due to the migration of parents to work increased the propensity of men to commit crimes in adulthood. Dandan Zhang, a tenured professor of economics at Peking University's National School of Development, and his collaborators revealed this conclusion in a 2022 research article published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, a top journal of behavioral economics.

As left-behind children in the 1990s and early 2000s reached adulthood, China's crime rate also rose significantly, the article said. According to the China Law Yearbook, from 1982 to 2014, China's criminal prosecution rate experienced a significant increase.

The reasons behind this phenomenon are complex and diverse, and the study focuses on another underlying factor that may contribute to increased crime rates – the experience of childhood leftovers and their long-term impact on adult delinquency.

In fact, the association between left-behind children and rising crime rates has received widespread attention, but few studies have explored the specific links between the two, largely due to the lack of relevant data.

To this end, Zhang's team conducted data collection in 2013 at a men's prison in China, where more than 85 percent of inmates are rural migrants. In the same year, the team also conducted the same questionnaire survey and economic experiment on a sample of ordinary rural migrant workers outside prisons. With the help of this unique individual crime data, the study explores whether the absence of parents from migrant work before the age of 16, known as "stay-behind", is associated with the increased propensity of children to commit crimes as adults.

The study found that left-behind children were about 1.8 to 2.5 percentage points more likely to be incarcerated as adults than non-left-behind children. Even taking into account family background, personal characteristics and regional factors, this difference is significant.

These "left behind" children are less educated and more inclined to take risky behaviors. Low levels of education and risk-taking behaviour are important predictors of prison sentences in adulthood. Together, these factors explain more than half of the high crime rates among left-behind children, with educational attainment having the most significant effect.

Background:

Over the past few decades, China's rapid economic growth has facilitated a massive migration from rural areas to cities. In particular, from 1997 to 2019, the number of migrant workers in urban areas surged from 38 million to 174 million. Due to China's unique hukou system, these migrant workers face significant barriers to accessing basic social services and benefits in cities. This has dramatically changed the family structure in rural China, resulting in tens of millions of children becoming "left-behind children", often cared for by elderly grandparents or other relatives, while some living in boarding schools.

According to the 2010 national census, there are 61 million left-behind children in China, accounting for 38 percent of all rural children and 22 percent of the country's total number of children. In addition, 9 million children remain in one city because their parents work in another city, bringing the total number of left-behind children in the country to 70 million. This widespread social phenomenon raises widespread concerns about its potential social consequences, particularly about the role of parents in guiding children's development and shaping their socially acceptable behaviours.

Theoretically, family structure has an important impact on adolescent behavioral development, including possible criminal tendencies. Social control theories (Nye, 1958) and social bond theories (Hirschi, 1969) emphasize the importance of family structures, especially parental supervision, control, and emotional connection with children, in preventing juvenile delinquency. In this context, the issue of left-behind children is not only a family or education issue, but also a broad issue related to social stability and future development.

In China, changes in family structure, especially the migration of parents, have a profound impact on the growth and development of children. This absence of parents not only leaves a gap in material custody and emotional connection, but also may weaken the supervision and guidance mechanisms within the family, which in turn affects the social behavior and mental health of children. In fact, research suggests that this sense of absence can be a key factor in children's criminal tendencies.

Specifically, many studies have focused on the educational and mental health challenges faced by children in the context of their parents' migration. For example, Zhang et al. (2014) found that in some poor rural areas of China, left-behind children are at a significant disadvantage in terms of educational progress compared to children living with their parents, especially when neither parent is around. Meng and Yamauchi (2017) also showed that left-behind children faced more negative impacts on health and educational achievement than non-left-behind children. In addition, the work of Shi et al. (2016) and Zhao et al. (2017) found that parental migration significantly increased psychosocial problems in left-behind children, such as anxiety, low self-esteem, emotional and behavioral problems, and decreased social communication skills.

However, there is currently limited research on the impact of these left-behind children on their adult life. Interestingly, as left-behind children in the 1990s and early 2000s began to reach adulthood, they began to move to cities in search of job opportunities and became an important part of China's urban workforce. This change has implications not only for their individual well-being and capacity development, but also for the economic and social fabric of China. In particular, policymakers have expressed concern about how this group's early experiences affect their socio-economic achievements in adulthood.

As these left-behind children grow up, China's crime rate has also increased significantly. Behind this trend are the influence of socio-economic factors, such as large-scale rural-urban migration, the imbalance in the gender ratio caused by the one-child policy, and social competition and income inequality brought about by economic development, as well as the influence of family background factors, especially the long-term impact of the absence of parents in the early years on individual behavior.

In order to analyze the causes of crime caused by stay-at-home, the study focused on two behavioral tendencies closely related to criminal behavior: risk preference and time preference. Early research has shown that parental presence can reduce adolescents' exposure to peer risk-taking behaviors, suggesting that risk-taking behaviors may be affected by parental absence. Similarly, parental companionship is highly correlated with children's time preferences.

Unlike previous studies that compared left-behind children in rural areas with children whose parents did not go out to work, the study also included an additional control group – children who migrated with them. This comparison is particularly important because one of the objectives of the study is to inform government policies, especially in the context of the high cost of parents bringing their children to work together, and to compare the long-term outcomes of "relocation" and "stay-behind".

Data source

The dataset used in this study combines two sources of information: male inmates (n=299) and male migrant workers (n=959) in a prison. The sampling of the non-prisoner sample was constructed using the sampling frame of the 2012 Rural-Urban Migration in China survey. The prisons surveyed in the study received prisoners arrested in the PRD, so the sample of migrant workers was screened to represent the region's male migrant worker population in terms of age, education, and employment industry.

In this pooled sample of 1034 people, the researchers excluded observations of missing values for key variables (28 observations) and, in order to focus on left-behind phenomena due to parental migration, excluded 38 individuals who experienced parental absence for other reasons (e.g., divorce, death of a parent). The final analysis sample was 968 people, including 678 male inmates and 290 male migrant workers.

Empirical results

The study explored the potential impact of parental absences due to migrant work on children's criminal behaviour in adulthood. The study found that left-behind children were significantly more likely to be incarcerated as adults than those whose parents did not migrate and whose children did not experience left-behind children. Specifically, left-behind children are about 1.8 to 2.5 percentage points more likely to be imprisoned as adults than non-left-behind children. Even taking into account family background, personal characteristics and regional factors, this difference is significant.

In addition, the study examined the effect of the duration of parental absence on children's criminal behaviour and found that for each additional year of parental absence, the child's probability of going to prison as an adult increased by an average of 0.2 percentage points. Notably, other factors such as marital status, the mother's education level and cognitive abilities, and children from more economically developed provinces appear to reduce the risk of incarceration to some extent.

The study explores how the phenomenon of left-behind children, especially due to labor mobility, affects the propensity of individuals to commit crimes in adulthood through multiple pathways. Sociologists have previously emphasized the importance of a complete family structure for children's education and pursuit of social advantage, while psychologists and economists have revealed that family structure has a significant impact on children's behavior patterns. Based on these theoretical foundations, the study focuses on the unique challenges faced by left-behind children and their long-term impact on society.

First, in terms of access to education, a large number of studies have confirmed that left-behind children generally do not perform as well as non-left-behind children of the same age, both in comparison with children from non-migrant families and with their parents in urban areas. This educational disadvantage extends to the level of education in adulthood. On average, the number of years of schooling in adulthood decreases by about 0.07 years for each additional year of left-behind experience, highlighting the long-term negative impact of parental absence on children's educational achievement.

Furthermore, the study also paid attention to the changes in behavioral preferences and personality traits, and found that left-behind children showed a more risk-taking tendency in risk appetite, and although there was no significant change in their attitude towards risk, their probability of making high-risk decisions was significantly increased. The changes in these behavioral traits are partly due to the lack of parental guidance and supervision during their growth, which affects their decision-making patterns and personality development.

The study shows that when educational and behavioral preferences are taken into account, the direct correlation between left-behind experience and the probability of going to prison in adulthood is weakened, indicating that educational achievement and risk preference play a mediating role in left-behind children's criminal propensity. In particular, educational achievement, as the most important mediating factor, explains the main ways in which the impact of left-behind on crime is explained.

Finally, through a comprehensive analysis of left-behind experience, educational achievement, behavioral preferences and personality characteristics, the researchers concluded that the absence of parents not only directly affects the educational and behavioral development of left-behind children, but also indirectly increases their risk of delinquency in adulthood through educational and behavioral factors.

This finding provides a scientific basis for the formulation of targeted policies that can reduce the likelihood of future crime and promote the harmony and stability of the whole society by improving the educational resources of left-behind children, strengthening the interaction between family and society, and cultivating healthy behavioral habits and personality traits.

注：该研究2022年发表在行为经济学顶刊Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization：

Lisa Cameron, Xin Meng, and Dandan Zhang, “Does being ‘left–behind’ in childhood lead to criminality in adulthood? Evidence from data on rural-urban migrants and prison inmates in China”, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2022, 202:675-693.

Text: Zhang Fan

Source: Caixin