Home sweet home? macroeconomic conditions in home countries and the well-being of migrants.: Did they change social reality?

Alpaslan Akay; Olivier Bargain; Klaus F. Zimmermann

Home sweet home? macroeconomic conditions in home countries and the well-being of migrants. Did they change social reality?

Alpaslan Akay
, Olivier Bargain
, Klaus F. Zimmermann

UNU-MERIT Research and Training Institute

Research output: Working paper / Preprint › Working paper

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Abstract

This paper examines whether the subjective well-being of migrants is responsive to fluctuations in macroeconomic conditions in their country of origin. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1984 to 2009 and macroeconomic variables for 24 countries of origin, we exploit country-year variation for identification of the effect and panel data to control for migrants' observed and unobserved characteristics. We find strong evidence that migrants' well-being responds negatively to an increase in the GDP of their home country. That is, migrants seem to regard home countries as natural comparators, which grounds the idea of relative deprivation underlying the decision to migrate. The effect declines with years-since-migration and with the degree of assimilation in Germany.

Original language	English
Place of Publication	Maastricht
Publisher	UNU-MERIT
Publication status	Published - 28 Jun 2016

Publication series

Series	UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Number	038
ISSN	1871-9872

JEL classifications

c90 - Design of Experiments: General
d63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
f22 - International Migration
o15 - "Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration"

Keywords

Migrants
well-being
GDP
unemployment
relative concerns/deprivation

Access to Document

fulltextFinal published version, 563 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-SA

https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2016/wp2016-038.pdfLicence: CC BY-NC-SA

Cite this

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title = "Home sweet home? macroeconomic conditions in home countries and the well-being of migrants.: Did they change social reality?",

abstract = "This paper examines whether the subjective well-being of migrants is responsive to fluctuations in macroeconomic conditions in their country of origin. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1984 to 2009 and macroeconomic variables for 24 countries of origin, we exploit country-year variation for identification of the effect and panel data to control for migrants' observed and unobserved characteristics. We find strong evidence that migrants' well-being responds negatively to an increase in the GDP of their home country. That is, migrants seem to regard home countries as natural comparators, which grounds the idea of relative deprivation underlying the decision to migrate. The effect declines with years-since-migration and with the degree of assimilation in Germany.",

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AB - This paper examines whether the subjective well-being of migrants is responsive to fluctuations in macroeconomic conditions in their country of origin. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1984 to 2009 and macroeconomic variables for 24 countries of origin, we exploit country-year variation for identification of the effect and panel data to control for migrants' observed and unobserved characteristics. We find strong evidence that migrants' well-being responds negatively to an increase in the GDP of their home country. That is, migrants seem to regard home countries as natural comparators, which grounds the idea of relative deprivation underlying the decision to migrate. The effect declines with years-since-migration and with the degree of assimilation in Germany.

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