The relationship between adult children migration and their left-behind parents’ health is one of the classic academic issues, but there is no consensus on this. This paper distinguishes two intergenerational support methods of children’s financial and time support to their parents. Based on the data of CHARLS 2018, the generalized propensity score matching method and the mediating effect model are used to re-examining the relationship between rural adult children migration and their parents’ health. The study found that rural adult children migration have both positive financial support and negative time-deficiency effects on the health of their parents. When the proportion of children migration is low, the positive economic effect is dominant, which promotes the better health of parents. When the proportion of children migration is high, the negative missing effect dominates, which is not conducive to the improvement of parents’ health. The combination of the two effects makes its impact on the health of parents appear the inverted “ U” shape of “ rising first and then falling ”. Further analysis shows that children’s migration has a greater positive economic support effect on the health of low- equity families or elderly parents, and a greater negative time-loss effect on the health of high-equity families or middle-aged parents. The policy implication of the research conclusion is that advocating the way of filial piety for children’ s economic support and time investment, actively promoting local urbanization, enriching rural cultural life and improving life quality of the left-behind groups in rural areas.
