Asylum Migration in OECD Countries: In Search of Lost Well-Being

Jordi Paniagua (), Jesús Peiró-Palomino () and Andres Picazo-Tadeo
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Jesús Peiró-Palomino: University of Valencia

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2021, vol. 153, issue 3, No 12, 1109-1137

Abstract: Abstract Alongside the economic determinants and unobserved structural forces that drive migration flows, asylum migration faces additional natural and man-made hazards, which fall in the broad category of well-being. This paper estimates the effect of a composite well-being indicator on asylum migration flows, using a structural gravity equation. The paper starts by augmenting the gravity model to explain asylum flows with country-pair relative well-being, relocation costs and multilateral resistance. Taking the OECD Better Life Index as a starting point, we then combine data envelopment analysis and multi-criteria-decision-making to construct a multidimensional well-being indicator that groups 22 raw indicators into a single composite indicator with 10 consistently comparable dimensions across countries. Then, using a panel of bilateral asylum flows in OECD countries, we are able to obtain theoretically-grounded and consistent estimates. Results reveal that the composite indicator of well-being significantly explains asylum decisions and also show that certain dimensions of well-being act as push and pull determinants.

Keywords: Asylum-seekers; Well-being; Composite indicator; Gravity equation; Multilateral resistance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: Asylum migration in OECD countries: In search of lost well-being (2020)
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DOI: 10.1007/s11205-020-02528-z

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