Ninth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

Internal migration in search of a better life is not a new phenomenon even today in China. If this betterment has been happening, a crucial question still remains open. The prediction of standard economic science on the fulfillment of human needs would be an automatic improvement as incomes increase. Despite the widely shared assertion of the economic mainstream, the relationship between income and well-being is rarely proven empirically. The main objective of this study is to examine the level of well-being of Chinese and Taiwanese females before leaving their homelands and after their migration to a new place. For data collection, a Likert-scale based 3-part questionnaire is used. The objective is to establish the relationship between the development of income and other conventional gains versus the availability of the satisfiers of eight cardinal needs for our sample before and after migration. The inquiry is built upon the model of cardinal needs, eightfold preconditions of any human well-being, including environmental, psychological and social needs, proposed as the underlying basis of human well-being interpreted differently overages, cultures, and disciplines. The results demonstrate that the availability of these obvious precursors of well-being decreased after migration in our sample. The satisfaction of material needs somewhat has improved while that of other needs have deteriorated. The study findings contribute to well-being studies as well as to understanding the geographical, socioeconomic, sociocultural differences in Chinese speaking regions of East Asia.