Is wives’ overseas migration a deterrent to the labor supply behavior of non-migrant spouse and school attendance of children left-behind? Evidence from the Philippines Temporary Migration

A key feature of the Philippine overseas migration is the increasing female migrants working outside their home. It is of interest that migrant women highly dominate overseas employment for the last decade who had to leave their homes and endure long years of family separation. The aim of this research was to determine how the migration of wives impacts the labor supply behavior or motivation to work of the husbands and the school outcomes of the children left behind. To achieve this objective, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was employed to address the research question. First, I modeled husbands’ participation in the labor market activities and school outcomes of children using nationally representative merged dataset on labor force and family income surveys and correct for the endogeneity of the migration status of wives using migrant networks. Results show that stayer husbands significantly reduce their hours of work and shift from being permanent to short-term employed persons. The reduced labor supply of the stayer husbands could be associated with an increasing proportion of men becoming less economically active due to their participation in the household or family duties due to the absent-wives. Meanwhile, the effect of migration also promotes productive investment, particularly in children’s education. However, much of the positive effect of migration is largely driven by boy’s attendance in school than girls. Second, I also interviewed female migrants at selected Middle East destination countries to understand transnational family relationships. The study found out that absent wives decide to work abroad based on the cooperation of their husbands to provide better welfare of their family, particularly children. This affirms parents’ altruistic attitude in terms of maximizing resources that benefit the whole family.