Abstract
It has been shown that higher levels of subjective well-being lead to greater work productivity, better physical health and enhanced social skills. Because of these positive externalities, policymakers across the world should be interested in attracting and retaining happy and life-satisfied migrants. This paper studies the link between life satisfaction and one's intentions to move abroad. Using survey data from 35 European and Central Asian countries, I find a U-shaped association between life satisfaction and emigration intentions: it is the most and the least life-satisfied people who are the most likely to express intentions to emigrate. This result is found in countries with different levels of economic development and institutional quality. The instrumental variable results suggest that higher levels of life satisfaction have a positive effect on the probability of reporting intentions to migrate. The findings of this paper raise concerns about possible 'happiness drain' in migrant-sending countries.
Highlights
The determinants of the individual emigration decision have long been a question of primary interest for academics and policy makers
The negative coefficient of the former and the positive coefficient of the latter imply a U-shaped relationship between life satisfaction and the probability of reporting emigration intentions, with the turning point corresponding to 6.20 units of life satisfaction – somewhat higher than the life satisfaction sample mean (5.58)
Wealth index has a positive association with emigration intentions, which could be explained by the necessity to have initial capital to cover migration costs
Summary
The determinants of the individual emigration decision have long been a question of primary interest for academics and policy makers. If subjective wellbeing is an important determinant of the decision to emigrate, policy-driven changes in happiness may affect individual migration decisions and the ensuing migration flows. The flip side of any ‘happiness gain’ for the migrant-receiving countries is ‘happiness drain’ for the migrantsending countries The policymakers of the latter should be concerned about the outflow of happy people, as this may deprive them of the many positive externalities that happiness is associated with. To human capital, happiness is a valuable resource that both migrant-receiving and sending countries may wish to acquire or retain, and a central question that policymakers may want to ask is whether it is the most or the least happy people who are more prone to migration
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