Abstract
Latin American emigrants, in addition to immigrants generally, report lower happiness levels than do natives in their destination country. We use Latinobarometro data on intent to migrate and find that potential migrants demonstrate the traits of “frustrated achievers” (e.g. respondents with high income gains, but who report low satisfaction with those gains) and are less happy than the average. Our analysis suggests that unhappiness drives migration, while not disproving that migration also creates unhappiness. These factors may reinforce one another. Our work speaks to the broader question of whether unhappiness is a necessary condition for major societal change.
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Notes
- 1.
For a review of the various terms used in the literature to describe happiness or well-being, and the substantive differences across them, see Graham (2011b).
- 2.
Graham has worked with the survey team for years, and therefore has advance access to the data.
- 3.
The polls are nationally representative and are interviews are by telephone in countries where land-line coverage is extensive, and in person in the rest. Graham is an academic advisor to the poll and, in that capacity, receives access to the data.
- 4.
Probit models assess the probability of a respondent being in a particular binary, ordinal category rather than attempting to impose a cardinal order. Probit models are deemed appropriate in this case, because the dependent variable, intent to migrate, reports only two categorical values: the respondent has considered migrating abroad or the respondent has not considered migrating abroad, with no differential cardinal values attached to either of the categories. The coefficients are reported as marginal effects, that is the change in the probability of intent to migrate that comes from moving from one category to the next of the independent variables (such as from being married to unmarried).
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Graham, C. (2016). Does Migration Cause Unhappiness or Does Unhappiness Cause Migration? Some Initial Evidence from Latin America. In: Rojas, M. (eds) Handbook of Happiness Research in Latin America. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7203-7_19
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