Does Migration Make You Happy? A Longitudinal Study of Internal Migration and Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

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The Relationship Between Size of Living Space and Subjective Well-Being

“…Findlay and Nowok (2012) examined the trajectories of different domain satisfaction judgements after internal migration in the BHPS and similarly found housing satisfaction to take a downward post-move trajectory. The exception is Nowok et al (2013), who found no evidence of adaptation in life satisfaction judgements. Again using the BHPS, they found that moving house (for any reason) was preceded by a period when individuals experienced a significant decline in life satisfaction.…”

“…This model has been used extensively for different life events (e.g. Clark and Georgellis 2013;Nowok et al 2013). A broadly similar set of controls is used with a few exceptions (see ''Appendix 1'').…”

Happiness and the emigration decision

“…Evidence for such a happiness-reducing effect exists for internal migration [10]. If it also holds for external migration, correlational evidence on happiness and the intention to migrate will suffer from a downward bias.…”

“…Ideally, a study would want to trace the evolution of the happiness of people as they start thinking about emigration and take specific actions to realize their emigration intentions. While no such evidence is available for international migrants, one study, based on British Household Panel Survey data for 1996-2008, traces the evolution of subjective well-being of internal migrants in the UK over time [10]. It finds that internal migrants' life satisfaction falls significantly before the move but recovers quickly once the move has occurred.…”

Neighbourhood Effects Research at a Crossroads. Ten Challenges for Future Research Introduction

“…However, the majority of these measures are all relatively 'hard' and normative indicators which are easy to quantify. Recently, countries like France and the UK have begun to attempt to quantify general well-being (happiness) as a valuable complementary measure for the evaluation of social progress (Nowok et al, 2013) and to develop policy responses. So in our focus on, for example, individual income, we should not forget to ask the question whether people are happy where they live, regardless of their income or employment status.…”