Left Behind: The Effects of Offspring’s Migration on Parental Mental Health in Mexico

Abstract

In many developing countries, offspring are the primary caretakers of parents. Yet migration,
also a common phenomenon in developing countries, may disrupt this process when offspring
move away. This paper examines how adult children's migration status, both internally and
internationally, affects the mental health of older parents who are left behind in Mexico, a
developing country with a rapidly aging population and a long history of international migration
to the United States. We use nationally-representative longitudinal data from the Mexican
Family Life Survey and find that parents whose offspring immigrated to the United States
experience increases in anxiety, sadness, loneliness and a wish to die compared to parents of
offspring who did not migrate. Our results speak to a number of recent studies highlighting the
ways in which immigration affects family processes in the sending context, the dynamics of
which have traditionally been neglected in studies of international migration.