Abstract
Migrants are believed to have higher aspirations than non-migrants. Furthermore, studies find that migration itself leads to even higher aspirations. One conventional explanation found in the literature is that migrants adapt their aspirations to their income relative to that of a new reference group. As this process continues migrants are miserably trapped on a hedonic treadmill. Alternatively, migration can be viewed as an investment in capabilities that can expand the aspirational window through the awareness of even better opportunities that lead to higher aspirations. If cities are viewed as places where migrants can accumulate human capital, the increase in aspirations after migration may be explained from an angle of expected returns to the human capital investment. Using two waves of Indonesian Family Life Survey (2000, 2007), this study presents tests of these two possible explanations about the change in aspirations after migration. To this end, this study uses a variable constructed by a difference between a migrant’s current level of subjective well-being and her future aspired level of well-being. The results cast doubt on the view that post-migration aspirations make migrants miserable in their migration destinations. Instead, this study finds ample evidence to support the view that migrants move to urban areas in order to accumulate human capital, looking forward to returns to their investment.
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Notes
The United Nations estimates that at least 860 million people live in slums across the developing world, with the number of slum dwellers growing by six million each year from 2000 to 2010 (UN Habitat 2013).
For instance, Czaika and Vothknecht (2014), using the same data, find evidence for a hedonic treadmill, but they do not examine the urban-based human capital investment theory.
As suggested by Kahneman and Deaton (2010), this study distinguishes between emotional well-being and life evaluation, two aspects of subjective well-being. The former refers to the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience or affection that make one’s life pleasant or unpleasant. In contrast, the latter refers to the opinion on the quality of their life.
The relationship between the migration time and the accumulation of human capital, of course, may not be linear, but this is unlikely to be an issue in this study, which confines the migration time to be within the past 5 years.
Respondents were asked on which step on the ladder they were expected to be one year later in the 2000 survey.
This is equivalent to a subdivision of a city.
The happiness questions are available only in the survey of 2007, while the subjective evaluations of respondents’ living standards are available in both years.
The mean of the current level is 2.97 for migrants and 2.84 for non-migrants.
The results are not reported in the Table.
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Lim, S.S. Aspirations of Migrants and Returns to Human Capital Investment. Soc Indic Res 138, 317–334 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1649-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1649-6