Abstract
In this chapter, we review and advance the evidence to date on the influence of subjective wellbeing (SWB) in origin and destination countries on people’s international migration decisions. These influences are analysed in the context that they supplement, rather than replace, the influence of labour market factors as migration determinants. We use a bilateral migration data set between 102 origin countries and 14 OECD destination countries from 2006 to 2013. We show that it is not just the mean of SWB across countries that counts but also SWB inequality is a factor that influences migration flows. We find that higher SWB inequality in each of origin and destination countries increases bilateral migration flows. Further, we provide evidence that this effect is non-linear, being attenuated as income (in either country) rises. These findings have implications both for research and for policies in the field of migration.
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Notes
- 1.
For instance, Borjas (1994) states: “(t)he migration decision is determined by a comparison of earnings opportunities across countries, net of migration costs” (p. 1688). None of the following terms is mentioned in his survey of prior work on the economic determinants of migration: “wellbeing (or well-being), subjective, happiness, satisfaction, amenity (or amenities), non-monetary, non-pecuniary”.
- 2.
Measures of overall life satisfaction (also known as evaluative SWB) are often differentiated from measures of short-term happiness or ‘positive affect’—see Sect. 10.2.1.
- 3.
After discussing monetary returns to regional migration, Sjaastad (1962) states: “In addition, there will be a non-monetary component, again positive or negative, reflecting his preference for that place as compared to his former residence” (p. 86).
- 4.
International migration decisions are more complex than regional migration decisions involving issues such as immigration restrictions, high travel costs and language and cultural barriers. We discuss the importance of controlling for such issues in modelling international migration flows in Sects. 10.2 and 10.4 of this chapter.
- 5.
Another form of subjective wellbeing that is surveyed across countries is “purpose in life” or eudemonia. This is a somewhat different concept from evaluative or hedonic wellbeing, and Graham and Nikolova (2015) find that its relationship to capabilities is not as strong as are the relationships between capabilities and either evaluative or hedonic wellbeing. Eudemonia is intuitively less likely to be related to migration decisions so is not considered further here.
- 6.
For instance, one study which retested individuals two weeks apart found a correlation coefficient of 0.59 for reported life satisfaction of individuals, while another which retested individuals four weeks apart reported a correlation of 0.77.
- 7.
Easterlin (1974) observed a paradox whereby richer people tend to be happier than poorer people within a country at any point of time; however while countries have become richer over time, they have not uniformly become happier over time. In part, this may be explained by adaption and in part by individuals placing a high weight on relative rather than absolute income. The existence of the Easterlin Paradox has since been challenged, e.g. by Stevenson and Wolfers (2008).
- 8.
- 9.
PS state that they conduct the same analysis using life satisfaction data from the WVS and find almost identical results.
- 10.
- 11.
A revised version of GW is forthcoming in International Migration.
- 12.
When the sample is split into pre- and post-global financial crisis sub-samples, the origin country SWB impact increases in absolute size while that of the destination country decreases, but still remains larger than the origin country effect.
- 13.
The study also examines the consequences of migration for those who move; this contribution is reviewed in Sect. 10.2.2.3.
- 14.
- 15.
The model can be extended to include multiple periods with the potential for multiple migrations over time; the key results remain qualitatively unchanged, so here we concentrate on the single period version to keep the exposition simple.
- 16.
This assumption abstracts from two competing hypotheses: (i) that people may suffer from an optimism bias that implies the ‘grass is expected to be greener’ in the other location (Ek et al. 2008), and (ii) that people have a wellbeing set-point that they gravitate toward no matter what circumstances they face (Cummins et al. 2014). The Cummins approach (which is an example of ‘adaptation’ to life events) suggests that we should not expect to observe prolonged SWB changes following migration. In our empirical work, we focus on ex ante determinants of migration rather than on ex post outcomes so the set-point issue is moot (unless people rationally expect this effect to occur—contrary to the Ek et al. optimism bias hypothesis).
- 17.
Given that all our destination countries are relatively affluent (compared with the global mean), our results should be interpreted as determinants of flows towards developed countries rather than as determinants of flows to less developed countries.
- 18.
Two countries (Norway and Switzerland) were dropped from the Aburn and Wesselbaum (2017) dataset owing to a lack of SWB data.
- 19.
Source: World Bank World Development Indicators, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.TOTL.ZS?view=chart.
- 20.
The dataset contains 16 percent zero migration flow observations. In our econometric work, we add one to each observation and use the log of the resulting variable as our dependent variable.
- 21.
- 22.
We note the presence of these controls in the table but, for brevity, do not report the coefficients.
- 23.
Recall that we include country fixed effects so the effect of the average level of origin country GDP on migration flows will be reflected in these fixed effects.
- 24.
If we include both interaction terms in the same equation, we obtain almost identical estimates for each variable as reported in columns (4) and (5).
- 25.
Grimes et al. (2017) show (theoretically) that in an intertemporal model, both young people with high rates of time preference and old people with low rates of time preference will locate in high SWB/low wage locations, while young people with low rates of time preference and old people with high rates of time preference will locate in low SWB/high wage places.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dominic White for assistance and thank two reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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Grimes, A., Wesselbaum, D. (2021). The Role of Subjective Wellbeing in Cross-Border Migration. In: Kourtit, K., Newbold, B., Nijkamp, P., Partridge, M. (eds) The Economic Geography of Cross-Border Migration. Footprints of Regional Science(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48291-6_10
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