Internal Migration and Life Satisfaction: Well-Being Effects of Moving as a Young Adult

Maggie Switek ()
Additional contact information
Maggie Switek: Milken Institute

No 7016, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Migration typically leads to higher income, but its association with life satisfaction remains unclear. Is migration accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction? If it is, is the increase in income responsible or are other life domains driving the satisfaction changes? These two questions are addressed using longitudinal data from a Swedish Young Adult Panel Study for 1999 and 2009. Comparing migrants to non-migrants, it is found that internal migration is accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction. This increase is observed for both, migrants who move due to work and those who move due to non-work reasons. This finding holds regardless of other life transitions that may accompany migration, such as marriage and joining the labor market. However, different factors account for the increase in life satisfaction for work and non-work migrants. For non-work migrants, it is greater housing satisfaction that leads to an improvement in life satisfaction. Moreover, no increase in income relative to non-migrants is found for this group. For work migrants, although their income increases compared with non-migrants, this increase does not seem to explain the differential improvement in life satisfaction because of a lack of improvement in their economic satisfaction (compared to non-migrants). Rather, it is the higher relative status arising from occupational advancement that seems to contribute to the higher life satisfaction for work migrants.

Keywords: internal migration; life satisfaction; relative status; housing satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J0 J61 O15 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2012-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hap, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7016.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp7016

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().