Moving Towards Happiness?

Abstract

We add to the literature on the driving forces of international migration. While the existing literature establishes that income differences, migration costs and certain other factors (e.g. climate or human rights) affect the migration decision, we focus on the broader role of non‐pecuniary factors. We include well‐being measures in a standard model of bilateral migration flows and enrich the analysis further by testing the effects on migration of inequality in happiness within a country. Our findings that both the mean and standard deviation of happiness – in both origin and destination countries – help explain bilateral migration flows over and above any income effect, indicates the need to incorporate both pecuniary and non‐pecuniary factors when modelling migration choices.

International Migration and the (Un)happiness Push: Evidence from Polish Longitudinal Data

“…The second challenge to the existing migration literature is related to our finding of highly heterogeneous effects of unhappiness on international migration. The fact that unhappiness influenced actual international migration only under certain conditions (i.e., employment status) or for certain demographic groups (i.e., women) suggests that macroeconomic analyses of international migration (e.g., Grimes and Wesselbaum 2019) based on bilateral flows between home and host countries may not capture some potentially fundamental differences across the home-country population. People respond in complex, often divergent ways to the same push and pull factors (Constant and Massey 2002).…”

“…This macro-level analysis on the linkage between happiness and international migration is connected to another interesting research problem: as people in poorer countries are less happy on average than people in wealthier ones (Polgreen and Simpson 2011) and if the predictions of Grimes and Wesselbaum's (2019) model are correct, then international migration can contribute to narrowing the happiness gap between poorer and wealthier economies. Yet, the problem of the happiness gap and international migration's role in it has not been addressed yet in empirical studies.…”

“…While traditional studies have largely focused on the role of observable monetary incentives and labor-market opportunities, such as wage and unemployment differentials (Jennissen 2003;Ortega and Peri 2013), a growing number of studies have shifted attention to the role played by subjective factors, such as perceived quality of life, well-being, and happiness (Simpson 2013;Cai et al 2014;Ivlevs 2014;Otrachshenko and Popova 2014;Ivlevs 2015). In fact, observable measures of the push and pull factors that shape individuals' migration intentions and actual moves often fail to capture the complexity of the non-monetary and subjective factors that influence these processes (Cai et al 2014;Grimes and Wesselbaum 2019). In this regard, measures of individuals' subjective well-being can be important complements to traditional determinants of migration such as income levels, as they might capture many unobserved determinants of the migration decision.…”

What Matters for the Wellbeing of Mothers and Children in Material Hardship? Application of a Modified Indicator Framework

“…This thinking has led to the adoption of checklists of indicators to summarise multiple domains of wellbeing (Stiglitz et al, 2009 ; OECD, 2011 ). Despite these criticisms, there is evidence that life satisfaction has a positive relationship with other wellbeing metrics, such as health (Deaton, 2008 ) and revealed preference choices including migration decisions (Grimes et al, 2014 ; Grimes & Wesselbaum, 2019 ).…”

The Relationship between Subjective Wellbeing and Subjective Wellbeing Inequality: Taking Ordinality and Skewness Seriously.

“…We use the terms 'subjective wellbeing', 'wellbeing', and 'satisfaction with life' interchangeably.2 For reviews of the relationship between individual SWL and income inequality, seeSchneider (2016) andNgamaba et al (2018).3 Other studies using measures of SWL inequality to explain outcomes includeVeenhoven (1990),Stevenson and Wolfers (2008),Ott (2015), andGrimes and Wesselbaum (2019).…”