Impact of Migrant Populations on National Wellbeing: A Mixed Methods Approach

Abstract

The topic of human happiness is important to economic policy because life satisfaction (wellbeing) should be one of the main goals of national and international policymakers (Becchetti, Trovato, and Londono Bedoya (2011). The Human Development Index (HDI) is a tool the United Nations (UN) uses to measure and rank the social and economic development levels of countries (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2016). It targets four main areas: average number of years of education, expected years of education, life expectancy at birth, and gross national income per capita. However, it does not provide statistics related to migrant and refugee levels of wellbeing. Furthermore, there is limited scholarly research on current refugee and migrant populations in relation to measures of socioeconomic progress. The aim of this research is to determine the effect, if any, these populations have on the HDI of countries around the world. This study is based on a mixed-methods sequential exploratory design, first using quantitative research to analyze already published HDI results and then utilizing qualitative research methods, interviews, and surveys to explain the results in more detail (Creswell, 2014). The findings of this research will address a gap in the literature that relates to an important topic, how refugee and migrant populations affect the human development and level of wellbeing of the world’s countries.