Happy moves? Assessing the impact of subjective well-being on the emigration decision

Recent literature suggests that higher levels of subjective well-being (happiness and life satisfaction) lead to greater productivity, better physical health and enhanced social skills. The governments of migrant-receiving countries should, therefore, be interested in attracting happy migrants, as this can reduce the burden on the welfare state and facilitate migrants’ integration into the host society. To determine how people select into migration on the basis of subjective well-being, we study causal effects of life satisfaction on emigration intentions in 29 post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Instrumental variable analysis suggests that higher levels of life satisfaction have a positive effect on the probability of reporting intentions to migrate, i.e. prospective migrants are positively selected on subjective well-being.