Tobias Stöhr

Alone but better off? Adult child migration and health of elderly parents in Moldova

Increasing labor migration and simultaneous aging of societies are two important demographic developments many poor countries face. Elderly people who are left behind may experience a decrease in welfare when their children migrate. This paper investigates the effect of migration on various dimensions of elderly health using unique data from Moldova, which has one of the highest emigration rates in the world. We find positive migration effects on body mass index (BMI), mobility and self-reported health. No effects are found on depression and cognitive capacity. We find evidence that these positive outcomes are linked to an income effect which leads to improvements in diet and identify a reallocation of time use from subsistence farming to leisure and sleep which may have further beneficial effects. These positive effects seem to compensate the elderly for decreasing social contact with their migrant family members.

Household Interview Duration Analysis in CAPI Survey Management

This article provides evidence-based guidance for practical survey work, namely choosing interviewers and their workload. Analyzing a survey of 3,568 households obtained through computer assisted personal interviews (CAPI), we find that interviewers learn considerably while the survey progresses. Time requirements for fieldwork increase concavely with sample size. This allows using larger samples with a given budget than would be expected in planning such projects with simplistic cost estimates. We find a decrease of interview duration of almost 50%, which translates into a significant increase of the average hourly wage the interviewers receive. These learning effects cease after around 20 interviews. Based on our results, we recommend targeting interviewer training by age and technology-affinity of interviewers for CAPI surveys.

Much ado about nothing? The (non-) politicisation of the European Union in social media debates on migration:

The widespread view that the refugee crisis has sparked unprecedented levels of European Union politicisation has rarely been backed by systematic empirical evidence. We investigate this claim using a novel dataset of several thousand user comments posted below articles of German regional media outlets on Facebook. Despite considerable European Union authority in the policy area, extensive media coverage of the crisis and the rise of a populist party in Germany, our results suggest that the politicisation of Europe remains low among social media users, especially when compared to national and subnational levels of governance. When talking about Europe, users hardly refer to European Union institutions or policies. Instead, other member states and notions of the geographic or cultural space dominate the debate.

Can Parental Migration Reduce Petty Corruption in Education

The income generated from parental migration can increase funds available for childrens education. In countries where informal payments to teachers are common migration could therefore increase petty corruption in education. This hypothesis is tested by investigating the effect of migration on educational inputs. An instrumental variables approach is used on survey data and matched administrative records from the World Banks Open Budget Initiative (BOOST) from Moldova, one of the countries with the highest emigration rates. Contrary to the positive income effect, the strongest migration-related response in private education expenditure that is found is a substantial decrease in informal payments to public school teachers. Any positive income effect due to migration must hence be overcompensated by some payment-reducing effects. A number of potential explanations at the family level, school level or community level are discussed, several of these explanations ruled out and possible interpretations for future research highlighted.