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This paper presents empirical evidence that racial diversity and immigrant
population at the local level tend to be associated with lower life satisfaction for Whites
by matching individual data with the county-level population data during the period 2005–
2010. The magnitudes I find suggest that a ten-percentage-point increase in the share of the
non-White population (approximately one half of a standard deviation) is associated with
0.006 and 0.007 points reduction in life satisfaction on a four-point scale for White men and
White women, respectively. For White men, this effect appears to be driven by the
percentage of the population that is Black. I also find that a ten-percentage-point increase
in the percentage of the immigrant population (approximately 2 standard deviations) is
associated with 0.009 and 0.021 points reduction in life satisfaction for White men and
White women, respectively. The percentage of the non-White population seems to reduce
older Whites’ life satisfaction more than that of younger Whites. Though the scale of the
findings relating to the impact of local racial compositions and immigrant population is
relatively modest, the findings may pose a challenge in the coming years as the percentage of
the population that is non-White rises in the USA.