Previous research indicates that the effects of parental migration on their children's academic outcomes are complicated. While parents working remotely can enhance the family's financial situation, potentially boosting the child's educational resources and outcomes, their absence can also result in diminished oversight and involvement in the child's schooling, adversely affecting academic achievement. Using nationally representative data from the China Education Panel Survey, this study employs doubly robust estimators to examine the heterogeneous treatment effects of parental migration on rural children's cognitive ability. The results show that, on average, both parents’ absence from the home has significant negative effects on female students’ cognitive ability. Furthermore, the findings support the positive selection hypothesis that children who are most likely to experience parental migration suffer the most from the absence of both parents. The heterogeneous impacts of parental migration shed light on the enduring educational barriers encountered by left-behind children in disadvantaged contexts.
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