Migration and life satisfaction: evidence from Latin America.(Report)

Abstract

Using data from the Gallup World Poll and Latinobarometro, we examine the relationship between life satisfaction, vulnerabilities, and migration in Latin America. We look at three kinds of insecurities: nutritional, personal, and job insecurity. We find that controlling for income, migration experience by a household member increases life satisfaction of the respondent. We also find, however, that nutritional insecurities interact negatively with migration. In other words, hunger has a devastating effect on happiness, especially in households where a member is absent due to migration.

Introduction

Migration is an issue of major importance in Latin America. In data we discuss below, approximately a third of Latin American households report they either have a family member living abroad, or have had a family member living abroad in the last-five years. The impact of migration on the individuals who remain is of obvious interest. The bulk of the existing literature has looked at the effects of migration (and remittances) on some socioeconomic dimensions of the remaining family members. For example, Cox-Edwards and Ureta (2003) show that in El Salvador children in households receiving remittances are less likely to leave school, Hildebrandt and McKenzie (2005) find that in Mexican households with migrants, newborns are more likely to have higher birth weight and to be delivered by a professional doctor, and Lopez-Cordova (2005) concludes that in Mexican municipalities with more remittances infant and child mortality rates are lower. However, some papers show that migration has negative consequences such as less investment by parents in some health inputs or worse academic and social performance for children with one or both migrant parents (Hildebrandt & McKenzie, 2005; World Bank, 2006; and the citations therein). There is an intense controversy over these results in part because the standard econometric problems of reverse causality and selection bias that plague this literature.

A comprehensive assessment of migration is even more complex because some of its effects go beyond the realm of economic choices. Even if migration brings greater material opportunities, family disintegration can have negative effects on the quality of life. For example, Gunatilleke (1990) finds that in a sample of families from Sri Lanka who had a migrant, one-fifth reported new difficulties with children, including unruly behavior, poorer health, and signs of grief or depression. Evidence of this sort underscores the importance of looking at effects of migration on subjective self-assessments of well-being.

In this vein, while not looking at migration directly, the Inter-American Development Bank's remarkable synthesis of work on the "economics of happiness" as it applies to Latin America demonstrates the insights that can be gained from considering subjective assessments (Lora, 2008). For example, the "paradox of unhappy growth" suggests an explanation for why successful growth-promoting policies are not popular, even when they are Pareto-optimal: growth induces increases in expectations for economic prosperity that outstrip the recorded growth. Understanding the impact of migration on societies requires moving beyond externally verifiable measures to examine how people perceive their experiences.

The "Economics of Happiness" has launched a broad array of definitions of well-being or happiness (or life satisfaction). The goal is to craft policies to improve a broad definition of "Quality of Life," including domains ranging from employment to health to education. There is much variation in how researchers actually implement the notion of "Quality of Life" (QoL). A typical definition, from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (e.g. Fahey, Nolan & Whelan, 2003), considers QoL as the ability of people to attain the goals and choose the lifestyle that they want. In this paper, we use questions from polling data that ask for an overall evaluation of the respondents lives (we report the precise wording below). We will use "happiness," "satisfaction," and "well-being" interchangeably throughout in referring to this evaluative measure.