Miserable migrants? Natural experiment evidence on international migration and objective and subjective well-being

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 6871

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; General Welfare; Well-Being ; Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
• Subject: immigration ; lottery ; natural experiment ; subjective well-being ; Tonga ; Pacific Islands ; Einwanderung ; Internationale Wanderung ; Lebensstandard ; Zufriedenheit ; Framing ; Tonga ; Pazifische Inseln (USA) ; Neuseeland

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Stillman, Steven ; Gibson, John K. ; McKenzie, David J. ; Rohorua, Halahingano
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/67272
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET