Ethnic diversity and well-being

Abstract

This paper investigates how ethnic diversity, measured by immigrants' nationalities, influences the well-being of the host country. Using panel data from Germany from 1998 to 2012, we find a positive effect of ethnic diversity on the well-being of German natives. Our finding is robust to alternative definitions of ethnic diversity and to the non-random selection of natives and immigrants into regions. The positive effect of ethnic diversity is stronger for immigrant groups that are culturally and economically closer to Germany. Consistent with this result, we document the existence of two mechanisms explaining the influence of ethnic diversity on well-being: productivityas captured by immigrants' skills and assimilation -and social capital -particularly in relation to the creation of a multicultural environment. JEL codes: C90, D63, J61

Racial diversity, immigrants and the well-being of residents: evidence from US counties

“…7 They use data from these 26 countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, satisfaction from living in areas with more immigrants in Germany. On a similar topic, Akay et al (2017) find that ethnic diversity is also associated with higher life satisfaction in Germany.…”

Bringing Happiness Into the Study of Migration and Its Consequences: What, Why, and How?

“…Subjective well-being evaluations can estimate the overall outcome of immigration for the host country's natives, as natives' life evaluations implicitly capture and weigh the various costs and benefits of migration. Most initial evidence suggests that immigration and the related ethnic and cultural diversity generally have a positive though marginal impact on the well-being of the native population in various European countries (e.g., Akay, Constant, Giulietti, & Guzi, 2017), but this may not hold in every context or for more local communities (Longhi, 2014). Another stakeholder group for whom happiness has remained unstudied but that deserves attention is the broad population of the sending society; that is, equivalent to the notion of a brain gain/drain, the existence of a "happiness gain/drain" merits exploration.…”

Local-level immigration and life satisfaction: The EU enlargement experience in England and Wales

“…Since the BHPS follows the same people over time, we can estimate fixed effects regression models that take account of the potentially confounding impact of time-invariant individual characteristics. Our paper contributes to the nascent literature on the effects of immigration and diversity on the subjective well-being of native populations (Betz and Simpson, 2013;Longhi, 2014;Akay at al., 2014;Akay et al, 2017), the detailed review of which we provide in the next section, as well as to the broader, rapidly growing literature on subjective well-being and migration. 6 We also add to the literature studying the relative importance of individual and 6 See Simpson (2013) for an overview, Ivlevs (2015) for a review of the effects of subjective well-being on the emigration decision, Nikolova and Graham (2015) for a review of the effects of international migration on regional variation in subjective well-being, as well as the regional and local-level determinants of it.…”

“…Our study adopts a methodology similar to Akay et al (2014) and Akay et al (2017), although we exploit a more disaggregated spatial variation in immigration rates (320 local authority districts of England and Wales) and concentrate on the effects on life satisfaction of a specific migration wave (A8 migration). We hypothesise that the A8 immigration may have affected the subjective well-being of UK residents through a number of channels: by increasing concerns about labour market competition and provision of public services (note that, even in the absence of real effects, people may still think immigration is harmful) and disrupting local ways of life through increased diversity.…”