Subjective Well-Being Among Ethnic Minorities: The Role of Socio-economic and Non-economic Factors – the Dutch Case

In this paper we investigate the role of socio-economic factors like income, unemployment levels and non economic factors such as religion, identity and culture to explain the reasons for disparity of happiness levels among Turkish and Moroccan Immigrants in the Netherlands. The statistics demonstrate that Moroccans, although they have lower income levels and higher unemployment rates than the Turks, are more integrated to Dutch society and their life satisfaction level is higher than the Turks. Drawing on recent research concerning happiness, we can consider how certain cultural facts and psychological processes (e.g. adaptation, aspirations, and comparisons) might operate in counterintuitive ways for immigrants despite ostensible economic gains. In order to examine this dilemma we applied Mann-Whitney U test to reveal group differences in relation to life satisfaction levels.