Moving towards happiness

Arthur Grimes and Dennis Wesselbaum

No 18_07, Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

Abstract: We add to the literature on the driving forces of international migration. While the existing literature establishes that income differences, migration costs, and certain other factors (e.g. climate or human rights) affect the migration decision, we focus on the broader role of nonpecuniary factors. We include well-being measures in a standard model of bilateral migration flows and enrich the analysis further by testing the effects on migration of inequality in happiness within a country. Our findings that both the mean and standard deviation of happiness - in both origin and destination countries - help explain bilateral migration flows over and above any income effect, indicates the need to incorporate both pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors when modelling migration choices.

Keywords: Happiness; International Migration; Wellbeing. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 O15 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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