Male Absence Due to Migration and the Health of Left-Behind Wives in India

项目摘要 单身男子移徙是许多家庭为分散风险和改善家庭状况而采取的一种战略。 经济条件。发展中国家的数百万妇女在地理上与她们的 由于国内和国际劳动力的大规模流动，积极看待移徙问题， 鉴于汇款带来的经济利益，可以改善营养和获得 为留在原籍社区的家庭成员提供医疗保健。然而， 留守妻子的男性缺席问题尚未得到充分理解。目前尚不清楚经济是否 汇款的好处可以弥补移民增加可能对健康造成的不利影响， 工作量大，情绪紧张，丈夫移民后缺乏社会支持。只有 一些研究调查了男性因移民而缺席对留守妻子的健康影响， 他们报告的调查结果喜忧参半。关于男性向外迁移的机制， 影响留守妻子的健康，或者男性流动对留守妻子的健康影响如何变化 不同的移徙模式和妻子得到的社会支助数额。 这一拟议项目将研究男性外移对留守妻子健康的影响， 利用2004 - 2005年印度人类发展调查（IHDS）收集的两波纵向数据， 2011 - 12。以前关于这一主题的研究由于无法充分解决移徙问题而受到阻碍 选择性和缺乏关于移徙特点的数据。依靠IHDS丰富的数据集， 在这项研究中，我们将能够进行几项创新的分析。首先，我们将研究 丈夫的迁移状况和迁移特征对印度留守妻子健康的影响， 考虑到移徙前的个人和家庭特征，移徙具有选择性。我们 明确考虑到使用倾向得分分析的外迁选择过程。 此外，我们还将梳理出迁移特性的多个方面的作用，包括 汇款、移徙时间和家访频率。其次，我们将测试潜在的抵消作用， 男性移徙影响留守妻子健康的机制，包括妇女的健康， 获得经济资源、身体自主、决策权、工作时间和家务 责任第三，我们将研究男性流动对留守妻子的健康影响 这取决于妇女从家庭和社区获得的社会支助的数量。我们预计 发现男性大家庭、女性原生家庭和社会群体的社会支持可以 减少男性缺席对留守妻子健康的潜在有害影响。

PROJECT SUMMARY Solo male migration is a strategy adopted by many families to diversify risks and to improve household economic conditions. Millions of women in developing countries are geographically separated from their husbands due to the massive flow of internal and international labor migration. Migration is viewed positively in general given the economic benefits brought by remittances, which can improve the nutrition and access to healthcare for family members staying in the origin communities. However, the psychosocial implications of male absence for the left-behind wives have not been fully understood. It is unclear whether the economic benefits from remittances could compensate for the possible detrimental health effects of the increased workload, emotional strain, and the lack of social support subsequent to the husbands’ migration. Only a handful of studies have examined the health effect of male absence due to migration on left-behind wives and they reported mixed findings. Even less is known about the mechanisms through which male outmigration influences the health of left-behind wives or how the health impact of male migration on left-behind wives vary by various migratory patterns and by the amount of social support received by the wives. This proposed project will examine the impact of male outmigration on the health of left-behind wives, using two waves of longitudinal data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) collected in 2004-5 and 2011-12. Previous research on this topic has been hampered by the inability to fully address migration selectivity and the lack of data on the characteristics of migration. Relying on the rich dataset from the IHDS, we will be able to carry out several innovative analyses in this study. First, we will examine the effect of husbands’ migration status and migration characteristics on the health of left-behind wives in India, while accounting for migration selectivity with regard to pre-migration individual and family characteristics. We explicitly takes into account the selection process of outmigration using propensity score analysis. Furthermore, we will sort out the role of multiple aspects of migration characteristics, including the amount of remittances, migration duration, and the frequency of home visit. Second, we will test the potentially offsetting mechanisms through which men’s migration influences the health of left-behind wives, which include women’s access to economic resources, physical autonomy, decision-making power, work hours, and household responsibilities. Third, we will examine how the health effects of male migration on left-behind wives are conditioned on the amount of social support received by women from the family and the community. We expect to find that social support from the male-side extended family, women’s natal family, and social groups can attenuate the potential detrimental effect of male absence on the health of left-behind wives.