Economic Migration and Happiness: Comparing Immigrants’ and Natives’ Happiness Gains From Income

By David Bartram. 2011

239 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Research on happiness casts doubt on the notion that increases in income generally bring greater happiness. This finding can be taken to imply that economic migration might fail to result in increased happiness for the migrants: migration as a means of increasing one’s income might be no more effective in raising happiness than other means of increasing one’s income. This implication is counterintuitive: it suggests that migrants are mistaken in believing that economic migration is a path to improving one’s well-being, at least to the extent that well-being means (or includes) happiness. This paper considers a scenario in which it is less likely that migrants are simply mistaken in this regard. The finding that increased incomes do not lead to greater happiness is an average (non)effect—and migrants might be exceptional in this regard, gaining happiness from increased incomes to a greater extent than most people. The analysis here, using data from the World Values Survey, finds that the association between income and happiness is indeed stronger for immigrants in the USA than for natives—but even for immigrants that association is still relatively weak. The discussion then considers this finding in light of the fact that immigrants also report lower levels of happiness than natives after controlling for other variables.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8ea253e2e727c6c38fbc51ea59161cf5184ab12c

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In General Health Professions

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Citations in the corpus

The happiness of international migrants: A review of research findings (2015, background): “Third, some sample sizes are too limited to reasonably expect that the happiness levels reach significance (Sam 1998; Hirschi 2009; Bartram 2011).”
The French Unhappiness Puzzle: The Cultural Dimension of Happiness (2014, background): “…a small literature on migration and happiness, showing unanimously (and unsurprisingly) that immigrants are less happy than natives, controlling for a series of observable characteristics and circumstances (see Stillman et al. 2012, Bartram 2011, Safi 2010, Baltatescu 2007, or De Jong et al. 2002).”
Bringing Happiness Into the Study of Migration and Its Consequences: What, Why, and How? (2018, background): “Hence, it cannot be automatically assumed that findings from the general happiness literature apply to migrants (Bartram, 2011): We need fine-grained information on what matters most for the happiness of this quite distinct group of people.”
Happiness and ‘economic migration’: A comparison of Eastern European migrants and stayers (2013, background): “with their financial situations despite having earnings roughly on par with those of natives (Bartram 2011); in other words, their incomes in an ‘absolute’ sense have manifestly increased relative to pre-migration levels but they are nonetheless even more dissatisfied with those incomes than natives”