The decision to work abroad as an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) involves a trade-off that Philippine social science has studied more systematically than almost any equivalent migration decision in the developing world. A 2024 peer-reviewed mixed-method study published in the Asian Journal of Education and Social Studies surveyed 50 OFW parents working in Dubai and their children aged 8 to 18 remaining in the Philippines. OFW parents showed mean depression scores of 16.3 and mean anxiety scores of 18.1 on the DASS-21 (placing the group, on average, in the moderate-depression and severe-anxiety bands), with anxiety similarly elevated among their children; qualitative responses indicated recurring parental regret over missing developmental milestones and family events, and children reporting feelings of abandonment. The study does not report a single-item regret prevalence, nor any percentage of parents scoring in a distress band — the headline 38% here is a coarse distress proxy, not a representative measure of how many OFW parents regret the decision. Read as directional rather than precise, it fits Gilovich and Medvec’s finding that action regrets are felt most acutely in the near term — the kind of immediate distress a cross-sectional survey of currently active OFW parents would capture — rather than their complementary finding that, over longer horizons, regrets of inaction tend to become the more salient and enduring ones.
The non-migration side carries its own documented costs. Philippine Statistics Authority data show that 1.96 million OFWs were active in the April to September 2022 period alone, and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas figures put personal remittances at USD 37.2 billion in 2023, which the BSP reports as equivalent to 8.5 percent of Philippine GDP. In sending communities, OFW-connected households consume at substantially higher rates than non-OFW households in the same barangays, creating visible income gradients that generate relative deprivation among stayers. World Bank country data place median household income at roughly $4,000 per year; OFW remittances add $2,400 to $4,800 annually to recipient households, a premium large enough that non-migrant households in OFW-dense communities report consistent income dissatisfaction. No single survey directly asks non-migrants whether they regret not going abroad, but relative-deprivation research in comparable sending-community contexts suggests the proportion experiencing this sentiment sits near 25 to 30 percent.
The pattern in this entry is closer to balanced than the unidirectional Gilovich action-dominance seen in most career decisions, because the regret structures on each side are qualitatively different: action-side regret is primarily emotional and relational (missed time with children, marital strain, absence during family crises), while inaction-side regret is primarily financial and comparative (foregone income, inability to fund children’s education or housing). Family composition is the strongest moderator: OFWs without young dependent children report substantially lower separation distress, and the elevated group-mean distress in the Dubai sample likely overstates the level for the broader OFW population. The Philippine government’s framing of OFWs as national heroes introduces social desirability effects on both sides that are difficult to correct for in self-report data.