Aspirations of Migrants and Returns to Human Capital Investment

Sung Soo Lim ()
Additional contact information
Sung Soo Lim: American University in Dubai

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2018, vol. 138, issue 1, No 15, 317-334

Abstract: Abstract Migrants are believed to have higher aspirations than non-migrants. Furthermore, studies find that migration itself leads to even higher aspirations. One conventional explanation found in the literature is that migrants adapt their aspirations to their income relative to that of a new reference group. As this process continues migrants are miserably trapped on a hedonic treadmill. Alternatively, migration can be viewed as an investment in capabilities that can expand the aspirational window through the awareness of even better opportunities that lead to higher aspirations. If cities are viewed as places where migrants can accumulate human capital, the increase in aspirations after migration may be explained from an angle of expected returns to the human capital investment. Using two waves of Indonesian Family Life Survey (2000, 2007), this study presents tests of these two possible explanations about the change in aspirations after migration. To this end, this study uses a variable constructed by a difference between a migrant’s current level of subjective well-being and her future aspired level of well-being. The results cast doubt on the view that post-migration aspirations make migrants miserable in their migration destinations. Instead, this study finds ample evidence to support the view that migrants move to urban areas in order to accumulate human capital, looking forward to returns to their investment.

Keywords: Aspirations; Human capital; Hedonic treadmill; Migration; Indonesia; Urbanization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-017-1649-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:138:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-017-1649-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-017-1649-6

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().