page_title: Left-behind children in China
section_title: Cause of Left-behind Children
hierarchical_section_title: Left-behind children in China / Cause of Left-behind Children
caption_attribution_description: Hanyang, Wuhan, Hubei, China
context_page_description: The left-behind children in China, also called "stay-at-home children", are children who remain in rural regions of China while their parents leave to work in urban areas. In many cases, these children are taken care of by their extended families, usually by grandparents or family friends, who remain in the rural regions.
  According to the UNICEF 2018 Annual Report, there are approximately 69 million children left behind by one or both of their parents due to migration, which is equivalent to thirty percent of the children in rural area. The number of left behind children is unevenly distributed across age groups, regions, and gender. The majority of the left-behind children population is located in south and central regions of China. Six south and central provinces, including Sichuan, Anhui, Henan, Guangdong, Hunan, and Jiangxi, take up 52% of the left-behind child population.
  Many factors contribute to the increase of left-behind children in China. Internal migration, which mainly involves massive economically-driven population shifts from the rural areas to the cities in China, produces a large population of left-behind children and migrant children.
caption: Construction in Hanyang, Wuhan, Hubei, China
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