Arbeitspapier
Miserable Migrants? Natural Experiment Evidence on International Migration and Objective and Subjective Well-Being
Over 200 million people worldwide live outside their country of birth and typically experience large gains in material well-being by moving to where incomes are higher. But effects of migration on subjective well-being are less clear, with some studies suggesting that migrants are miserable in their new locations. Observational studies are potentially biased by the self-selection of migrants so a natural experiment is used to compare successful and unsuccessful applicants to a migration lottery in order to experimentally estimate the impact of migration on objective and subjective well-being. The results show that international migration brings large improvements in objective well-being, in terms of incomes and expenditures. Impacts on subjective well-being are complex, with mental health improving but happiness declining, self-rated welfare rising if viewed retrospectively but static if viewed experimentally, self-rated social respect rising retrospectively but falling experimentally and subjective income adequacy rising. We further show that these changes would not be predicted from cross-sectional regressions on the correlates of subjective well-being in either Tonga or New Zealand. More broadly, our results highlight the difficulties of measuring changes in subjective well-being when reference frames change, as likely occurs with migration.
- Sprache
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Englisch
- Erschienen in
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Series: CReAM Discussion Paper Series ; No. 28/12
- Klassifikation
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Wirtschaft
General Welfare; Well-Being
Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
- Thema
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Immigration
Lottery
Natural experiment
Subjective well-being
Tonga
Pacific Islands
- Ereignis
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (wer)
-
Stillman, Steven
Gibson, John
McKenzie, David
Rohorua, Halahingano
- Ereignis
-
Veröffentlichung
- (wer)
-
Centre for Research & Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London
- (wo)
-
London
- (wann)
-
2012
- Letzte Aktualisierung
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10.03.2025, 11:45 MEZ
Datenpartner
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Objekttyp
- Arbeitspapier
Beteiligte
- Stillman, Steven
- Gibson, John
- McKenzie, David
- Rohorua, Halahingano
- Centre for Research & Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London
Entstanden
- 2012
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