Chuhong Wang is a Research Fellow at ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC) at the University of Southampton. She studied for her PhD in Economics at the University of Southampton from September 2012 to April 2017. Her research interests are health economics, economics of migration and labour economics, with a particular focus on migration and its economic and social effects, the impact of migration on those left behind in sending areas, as well as post-study migration decisions of international students.

We study the impact of adult children’s internal migration on the health and subjective well-being of elderly parents left behind, distinguishing between the genders of the migrant children. To overcome migration endogeneity, we exploit novel and exogenous variation in children’s astrological characteristics and apply instrumental variables methods. We find a positive effect of the migration of daughters on parents’ health and life satisfaction, but no such beneficial effects when sons migrate. We further explore the mechanism through which this gender-biased migration effect may arise. Our findings have important implications for regions and countries that have high rates of female emigration.