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Anticipation of Life Satisfaction Before Emigration: Evidence from German Panel Data

  • Chapter
Advances in Happiness Research

Part of the book series: Creative Economy ((CRE))

Abstract

Sociological as well as economic research stresses the impact of so called ‘push and pull factors’ on individual migration decisions. These push and pull factors are often understood as a combination of individual socio-economic and socio-demographic determinants and institutional contexts in home and (possible) destination countries. However, within this framework there is only little research on the correlation between life satisfaction and individual migration processes up to now. The paper provides an analysis that aims on investigating the development of individual life satisfaction before emigration from a highly industrialized country under a life course perspective by using longitudinal data from the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP). The estimated fixed effects models show a significant decrease of life satisfaction between three to two years before the final emigration event. This overall pattern can also be observed in almost all analyzed subgroups.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a brief overview of immigration to post-war Germany, see Carle (2007: 150–153).

  2. 2.

    Here, “foreigners” refer to people with non-German nationality. However, only 45 % of the German population with a migration history are (still) foreigners in this sense. About 55 % of those who migrated to Germany themselves, or whose parents migrated, have German citizenship either through naturalization or through birth (Federal Statistical Office 2012: 20). However, because of data collection methods, official statistics in Germany can often differentiate migrants only by their foreign nationality and, therefore, often underestimate the number of migrants and their offspring.

  3. 3.

    There are similar terminological problems with the word “immigration,” as here too, no clear time limitation can be set that would serve to define who is an immigrant and who is not. The term “remigration” is also problematic as it has no clear definition of the duration of the “waiting period” before a move is categorized as either remigration or emigration.

  4. 4.

    Experience has shown that some emigrants do not give notice of their departure, such as non-EU citizens who do not want to lose their right of residence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

    Marcel Erlinghagen

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  1. Marcel Erlinghagen
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Correspondence to Marcel Erlinghagen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics, Doshisha University Faculty of Economics, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan

    Toshiaki Tachibanaki

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Erlinghagen, M. (2016). Anticipation of Life Satisfaction Before Emigration: Evidence from German Panel Data. In: Tachibanaki, T. (eds) Advances in Happiness Research. Creative Economy. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55753-1_13

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