Barrett, Alan and Mosca, Irene (2013) The psychic costs of migration: evidence from Irish return migrants. Journal of Population Economics, 26 (2). pp. 483-506. ISSN 0933-1433

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Abstract

Within the economics literature, the 'psychic costs' of migration have been incorporated into theoretical models since Sjaastad (J Polit Econ 70:80 93, 1962). However, the existence of such costs has rarely been investigated in empirical papers. In this paper, we look at the psychic costs of migration by using alcohol problems as an indicator. Rather than comparing immigrants and natives, we look at the native-born in a single country and compare those who have lived away for a period of their lives and those who have not. We use data from the first wave of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing which is a large, nationally representative sample of older Irish adults. We find that men who lived away are more likely to have suffered from alcohol problems than men who stayed. For women, we again see a higher incidence of alcohol problems for short-term migrants. However, long-term female migrants are less likely to have suffered from alcohol problems. For these women, it seems that migration provided psychic benefits, and this is consistent with findings from

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Return migrants; Older adults; Alcoholism;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics, Finance and Accounting
Item ID:	11389
Depositing User:	Irene Mosca
Date Deposited:	21 Oct 2019 16:07
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Population Economics
Publisher:	Springer Verlag
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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