Care Needs and Migration: Household Determinants of Internal Labour Migration in Vietnam

Migration stands as a livelihood strategy for households in Southeast Asia. Recent literature calls for the study of migration at the household level and for the consideration of care needs among the determinants of migration. Based on the case of Vietnam, this article contributes to past research by providing a longitudinal analysis of how household care needs may influence the use of internal migration as a livelihood strategy. Using a household life-course perspective that recognizes how family care needs evolve over time, this article tests if care needs influence the propensity for a household to have one or more new member-out-migrants over time. We operationalize care needs through the household dependency ratio, health care and education expenditures. Multivariate analyses are based on longitudinal data from three passages of the Vietnam Living Standards Survey of 2010, 2012, and 2014. Results indicate that households needing to cover costs of children's education are more likely to engage in migration than those with health care needs. These results reinforce the idea that migration requires certain conditions to occur and that the immediate care needs that require co-presence tend to prevent, rather than incite, migration at the household level. Overall, the analysis indicates that evolving care needs and household members' capacities to provide for modify the way households organize and deploy their workforce over space and time.