Beyond Economic Bargaining: Effects of Work-Related Internal Migration on Subjective Well-Being from a Couple Perspective

There is a large body of literature that focuses on the economic effects of spatial mobility in the context of partnerships, often revealing that men have greater economic benefits from work-related internal migration than their female partners. Furthermore, there is a nascent literature researching how migration is related to subjective well-being (SWB), which largely ignores the couple perspective. This study combines these two research strands thereby overcoming their respective weaknesses. For this, we analyze the effect of work-related internal migration on SWB and extend usual individual-level approaches by taking on a dyadic perspective. From a theoretical point of view, we argue that SWB is the ultimate goal of negotiations within couples, building on the idea that individuals ultimately strive to improve their SWB. This theoretical reasoning puts the focus on a more cooperative understanding of couples’ decision-making processes about spatial mobility, in contrast to an interpretation of bargaining approaches highlighting the role of relative incomes in determining migration outcomes.

We apply fixed effects panel regression to data of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). First, our results reveal that men and women within couple-households increase their SWB through work-related internal migration, leading to an SWB increase on household-level. Both partners experience shifts of a similar magnitude. Second, we find that work-related internal migration enhances women’s SWB, independent of how their economic bargaining power (e.g. the share of household income they contribute) changes with migration. This is also the case for men, but if women’s’ economic bargaining power rises, men show no increase in their SWB overall. In sum, our findings question the usual interpretation of bargaining theories that couples’ negotiations in decision-making situations mainly center around economic aspects (e.g. income). Rather, various aspects, besides income, are subject of bargaining processes within couples, fostering SWB of both partners.