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Working Paper

The Well-Being of Nations: Estimating Welfare from International Migration

Sanghoon Lee,
Seung Hoon Lee &
Jeffrey Lin

Revised January 2021

WP 19-33 Revised - The limitations of GDP as a measure of welfare are well known. We propose a new method of estimation the well-being of nations.

A previous version of this working paper was originally published in August 2019.

Using gross bilateral international migration flows and a discrete choice model in which everyone in the world chooses a country in which to live, we estimate each country’s overall quality of life. Our estimates, by relying on revealed preference, complement previous estimates of well-being that consider only income or a small number of factors, or rely on structural assumptions about how these factors contribute to well-being.

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