Macroeconomic Fluctuations in Home Countries and Immigrants’ Wellbeing: New Evidence from Down Under

Ha Nguyen and Alan Duncan

No WP1502, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre Working Paper series from Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School

Abstract: In this paper we provide the first solid empirical evidence that improvements in home countries’ macroeconomic conditions, as measured by a higher GDP per capita and lower price levels, increase immigrants’ subjective well-being. We demonstrate this using 12 years of data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia panel, as well as macroeconomic indicators for 59 countries of origin, and exploiting exogenous changes in macroeconomic conditions across home countries over time. Controlling for immigrants’ observable and unobservable characteristics we also find the positive GDP impact is statistically significant and economically large in size. Furthermore, the GDP and price impact erodes when immigrants get older, or when they stay in the host country beyond a certain period of time. However, home countries’ unemployment rates and exchange rate fluctuations have no impact on immigrants’ well-being.

Keywords: GDP; Unemployment; Inflation; Exchange Rate; Well-being; Immigrants; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2015-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-mig and nep-opm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Macroeconomic fluctuations in home countries and immigrants’ well-being: New evidence from Down Under (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ozl:bcecwp:wp1502

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