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Health status of children left behind in rural areas of Sichuan Province of China: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: In recent decades, many workers from rural areas in China migrated to urban cities in search of a better livelihood. Due to the household registration policy and other financial barriers, more than 40 million of children were left behind in their rural home by their migrated parents in 2...

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Autores principales: Tang, Daisheng, Choi, Weng I., Deng, Liyuan, Bian, Ying, Hu, Hao
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6350297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30691456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12914-019-0191-9
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author Tang, Daisheng
Choi, Weng I.
Deng, Liyuan
Bian, Ying
Hu, Hao
author_facet Tang, Daisheng
Choi, Weng I.
Deng, Liyuan
Bian, Ying
Hu, Hao
author_sort Tang, Daisheng
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In recent decades, many workers from rural areas in China migrated to urban cities in search of a better livelihood. Due to the household registration policy and other financial barriers, more than 40 million of children were left behind in their rural home by their migrated parents in 2015. In this cross-sectional study, we aimed to investigate the influence of being left behind on these children’s physical and mental health. METHODS: A self-administered questionnaire was completed by participants about their demographic background and health status. Chi-square Test was conducted to investigate the influence. RESULTS: A total of 1662 participants responded and completed all the questions in the questionnaire. Significant differences existed between left-behind children group and non-left-behind children group on several health issues such as not going to school due to sickness (p = 0.080), completeness of the vaccination scheme (p = 0.036) and feeling of loneliness (p = 0.039). However, regarding symptoms like fever, cough or respiratory difficulties, diarrhea and twitch, as well as mental health problems like unhappiness and insomnia, no significant difference was found. Gender difference was also demonstrated showing that girls were more vulnerable than boys to certain symptoms and emotional problems. CONCLUSION: This study indicated that both being left-behind and gender had an impact on the children’s health. It is necessary to further reform the household registration system to improve rights of equal access to employment, education and health resources for workers and their children from rural areas in China. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12914-019-0191-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-63502972019-02-04 Health status of children left behind in rural areas of Sichuan Province of China: a cross-sectional study Tang, Daisheng Choi, Weng I. Deng, Liyuan Bian, Ying Hu, Hao BMC Int Health Hum Rights Research Article BACKGROUND: In recent decades, many workers from rural areas in China migrated to urban cities in search of a better livelihood. Due to the household registration policy and other financial barriers, more than 40 million of children were left behind in their rural home by their migrated parents in 2015. In this cross-sectional study, we aimed to investigate the influence of being left behind on these children’s physical and mental health. METHODS: A self-administered questionnaire was completed by participants about their demographic background and health status. Chi-square Test was conducted to investigate the influence. RESULTS: A total of 1662 participants responded and completed all the questions in the questionnaire. Significant differences existed between left-behind children group and non-left-behind children group on several health issues such as not going to school due to sickness (p = 0.080), completeness of the vaccination scheme (p = 0.036) and feeling of loneliness (p = 0.039). However, regarding symptoms like fever, cough or respiratory difficulties, diarrhea and twitch, as well as mental health problems like unhappiness and insomnia, no significant difference was found. Gender difference was also demonstrated showing that girls were more vulnerable than boys to certain symptoms and emotional problems. CONCLUSION: This study indicated that both being left-behind and gender had an impact on the children’s health. It is necessary to further reform the household registration system to improve rights of equal access to employment, education and health resources for workers and their children from rural areas in China. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12914-019-0191-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2019-01-28 /pmc/articles/PMC6350297/ /pubmed/30691456 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12914-019-0191-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Tang, Daisheng
Choi, Weng I.
Deng, Liyuan
Bian, Ying
Hu, Hao
Health status of children left behind in rural areas of Sichuan Province of China: a cross-sectional study
title Health status of children left behind in rural areas of Sichuan Province of China: a cross-sectional study
title_full Health status of children left behind in rural areas of Sichuan Province of China: a cross-sectional study
title_fullStr Health status of children left behind in rural areas of Sichuan Province of China: a cross-sectional study
title_full_unstemmed Health status of children left behind in rural areas of Sichuan Province of China: a cross-sectional study
title_short Health status of children left behind in rural areas of Sichuan Province of China: a cross-sectional study
title_sort health status of children left behind in rural areas of sichuan province of china: a cross-sectional study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6350297/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30691456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12914-019-0191-9
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