Method

We begin by describing our analytical sample, distinguishing between parents of offspring who did not experience a move, offspring who moved out of the parental home but remained within the same locality, offspring who migrated domestically between waves and offspring who migrated to the United States between waves. We then present results from zero-order multinomial regression models that assess the association between offspring migration and changes in parents’ emotional and psychological well-being. The outcome variable is the change in the measured outcomes between 2002 and 2005–6 (depressive syndrome, expressing anxiety, expresses wish to die, expressing loneliness, and expressing sadness). Next, we include controls for the respondent’s demographic characteristics, financial transfers between parents and non-resident children, and baseline characteristics in 2002. Finally, we assess important differences across groups. We test for the significance of interaction terms by parents’ age and type of offspring’s migration to see whether older parents experience offspring migration differently from their younger counterparts. In addition, we assess whether parents’ gender moderates the relationship between offspring migration and parental well-being. In analyzing the moderating effects of age and gender, we do not discuss the full model results although all results can be found in the online Appendix B. We adjust standard errors to account for clustering at the household level given that both mothers and fathers of the same migrant child may be included in the analytical sample. All analyses were conducted using Stata 14.