Journal of Economics and Development Studies

Does family’s Social Capital Affects Parental Involvement in the Schooling of Leftbehind Children? Empirical Evidence from Niger State, Nigeria
Bala Muktar, Mohd Razani B. Mohd Jali, Nor Azam Abdul Razak

Abstract
Recently, empirical studies have reported mixed findings on the impacts of parental migration on the academic performance of left-behind children. Although most of the studies suggested variation in parental involvement as the potential explanation for their findings, little is known about why parental involvement may differ among different left-behind households. Using a survey data collected from 401 caregivers of the left-behind children in rural areas of Niger State, Nigeria, we investigated the effects of family’s social capital on parental involvement in the schooling of the left-behind children. We also explore how these effects differ among different caregivers using Logistic regression model. We find that left-behind children in families with high social capital are more likely to have high parental involvement compared to their peers in households with low family’s social capital. Also, left-behind children under the care of mothers or non-parent caregivers are less likely to have high parental involvement compared to their peers under the care of fathers. We suggest that when migrating, parents should entrust the guardianship of their children in the households with high family’s social capital.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jeds.v5n2a6