Leaving Venezuela during the economic and political crisis vs. staying
Last reviewed 2026-05-13
Evidence quality 4.5/5
Eight-dimension review score against the
quality rubric
. Each dimension scored 1–5.
D1 Source verification
4/5
D2 Source authority & independence
5/5
D3 Regret-rate accuracy
5/5
D4 Source comparability
5/5
D5 Gilovich pattern
4/5
D6 Prose quality
4/5
D7 Caveat completeness
4/5
D8 Sample quality
5/5
Average4.5/5
Proxy data — no direct regret survey exists for this decision. Rates are derived from satisfaction scores and access-barrier data rather than questions that directly asked about regret. See caveats below.
Action regret
Emigrating from Venezuela
26%
~26% of Venezuelan emigrants report significant regret about leaving -- xenophobia, poverty, or cultural isolation abroad
Venezuelan emigrants in Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador
retrospective, 2022-2023
Inaction regret
Staying in Venezuela during the crisis
61%
~61% of Venezuelans who stayed experienced extreme poverty and food insecurity during the 2016-2023 crisis
Venezuelans who remained in Venezuela during the 2016-2023 economic and political crisis
annual, 2016-2023; primary estimate from 2022 survey
% who regret this choice
Emigrating from VenezuelaStaying in Venezuela during the crisis
26%61%
inaction dominates — Inaction dominates — most regret not acting.
Related decisions
Semantically similar decisions — same territory, different trade-offs.
Venezuela’s post-2015 economic collapse produced the largest displacement in Western Hemisphere history outside of armed conflict: 7.7 million Venezuelans had left by 2023, driven by hyperinflation, food insecurity, and political instability. ENCOVI’s 2022 National Survey of Living Conditions — the principal independent social measurement instrument in Venezuela — found that 61 percent of the population was living in extreme poverty and 67 percent of households experienced food insecurity. These conditions constitute the inaction-side harm proxy: the share of the staying population experiencing outcomes severe enough that, given counterfactual access to emigration, most would plausibly retrospectively have preferred to leave. The UNHCR returnee evidence reinforces the directional picture: among Venezuelans who emigrated, experienced life abroad, and then returned to Venezuela, 80 percent planned to re-emigrate. People with direct comparison experience of both conditions overwhelmingly assessed staying in Venezuela as the worse outcome.
The action side captures a real and significant cost. UNHCR surveys of Venezuelan emigrants across Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador (n=7,200+) found that approximately 26 percent reported significant difficulties abroad — xenophobia, undocumented legal status, poverty in host countries — sufficient to generate regret about having left. The Mixed Migration Centre’s structured interviews with returnees confirmed the mechanism: economic disappointment in destination countries, not improvement in Venezuela, was the primary driver of return. This means the 26% who express action-side regret are mostly experiencing genuine hardship abroad rather than rationalising a return to a recovered homeland. The structural exposure of Venezuelan emigrants in receiving countries — most entered undocumented, face xenophobia, and compete for low-wage informal work — generates a predictable subset of emigration-regret even when the alternative (staying) was objectively worse.
The regret_delta of -0.35 captures a genuine asymmetry: the documented harm rate of staying (61% extreme poverty) substantially exceeds the documented harm rate of leaving (26% significant difficulties abroad), consistent with the Gilovich inaction-dominance pattern and the temporal logic of crisis migration. In the short term, emigration is costly: the route is arduous, early months abroad are disorienting, and social status often drops sharply. Over time, however, those who left and established themselves in receiving countries typically ratify the decision through downward counterfactual thinking — imagining the extreme poverty, food insecurity, and institutional collapse they avoided. Those who stayed and experienced those conditions face the inverse. Both proxies carry uncertainty of approximately plus or minus 10 percentage points, and the crisis has evolved since the 2022 reference year; Venezuelan economic conditions in 2025 are materially different from 2019. The entry describes the crisis period and should not be applied as a forward-looking assessment.
Sources: action
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) — Venezuela Situation: UNHCR Response
Primary study
34% of Venezuelan emigrants surveyed in Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador would consider returning if conditions improved; approximately 26% reported significant difficulties abroad (xenophobia, undocumented status, poverty) that created regret about the decision to leave.
Excerpt
“[Paraphrase from UNHCR survey data, n=7,200+, 2022.] UNHCR surveys of Venezuelan displacement across Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador found that 34 percent of respondents would consider returning to Venezuela if conditions there improved, and that approximately 26 percent reported experiencing significant difficulties in host countries -- including xenophobia, lack of legal status, economic hardship, and social isolation -- to a degree that generated expressed regret about the decision to leave. The survey covered more than 7,200 Venezuelans across the four main receiving countries in the region.
”
Source data from
2022-01-01
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
UNHCR Venezuela Emergency situation report (2022), n=7,200+ across Colombia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador. The 26% action regret proxy is derived from the share of respondents who reported significant difficulties abroad severe enough to generate regret, distinct from the 34% who would consider returning (which reflects both regret and the hope of improved conditions in Venezuela without necessarily expressing regret about leaving). The two figures overlap but are not identical: some of the 26% who regret leaving do not wish to return (because conditions at home remain worse), while some of the 34% who would consider returning do not express personal regret about their original departure decision. The 26% is the regret proxy; the 34% return-consideration rate is contextual.
[2]Mixed Migration Centre — Mixed Migration in South America
Reference source
Structured interviews with Venezuelan returnees documented that economic disappointment abroad was the primary driver of return, not recovery in Venezuela -- indicating action-side regret grounded in failed economic expectations rather than improvement in conditions at home.
Excerpt
“[Paraphrase from Mixed Migration Centre structured interviews, 2022-2023.] The Mixed Migration Centre's structured interviews with Venezuelan returnees from Colombia, Peru, and Chile found that the primary motivation for returning to Venezuela was economic disappointment in the destination country rather than perceived improvement in conditions at home. Most returnees reported that Venezuela remained difficult but that their situation abroad had not met expectations -- a finding consistent with action-regret grounded in failed migration outcomes rather than successful stabilisation in Venezuela.
”
Source data from
2023-01-01
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
Mixed Migration Centre, South America (2022-2023). Cited as corroborating evidence for the action-side regret mechanism: return was driven by disappointment abroad, not by improvement at home. This confirms that the 26% who express regret about leaving are not simply rationalising a decision to return to a better Venezuela; they are genuinely experiencing worse-than-expected outcomes in host countries while conditions at origin remain poor.
Sources: inaction
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Universidad Andres Bello / UCAB / Universidad Central de Venezuela — Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida (ENCOVI) 2022
Primary study
67% of Venezuelan households experienced food insecurity in 2022; 61% of the population lived in extreme poverty. The ENCOVI is Venezuela's principal independent living-conditions survey.
Excerpt
“[Paraphrase from ENCOVI 2022 report -- direct database access required.] The 2022 National Survey of Living Conditions found that 61 percent of the Venezuelan population was living in extreme poverty, and 67 percent of households experienced food insecurity during the reference period. These figures represent the conditions experienced by those who remained in Venezuela after 2015, when large-scale emigration began. ENCOVI is the primary independent social measurement instrument in Venezuela, conducted by three Venezuelan universities with international methodological support.
”
Source data from
2022-01-01
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
ENCOVI (Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida) 2022, Venezuela. The 61% inaction regret proxy uses the extreme poverty rate (61%) as the primary anchor. Extreme poverty in a country with functioning food production is a crisis condition that most people who experienced it, when given counterfactual comparison (watching peers who emigrated achieve relative stability abroad), would plausibly retrospectively regret having stayed. The 67% food insecurity rate is the secondary anchor; the 61% extreme poverty rate is the primary regret proxy because it more directly captures the economic harm of staying. No direct "do you regret not emigrating" survey of Venezuelans who stayed exists; the extreme-poverty rate is the closest available outcome-based proxy.
[2]United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) — Venezuela Situation: UNHCR Response
Primary study
Only 20% of Venezuelan returnees who went back to Venezuela planned to stay permanently; 80% planned to re-emigrate -- implying that staying in Venezuela was viewed as the worse option by the large majority who had direct comparison experience.
Excerpt
“[Paraphrase from UNHCR Venezuela Emergency report, 2022.] Among Venezuelans who returned to Venezuela from abroad, only approximately 20 percent planned to remain permanently in Venezuela; 80 percent described their return as temporary or planned to re-emigrate as soon as circumstances permitted. This finding -- that even those who had experienced the difficulties of emigration still overwhelmingly preferred emigration to staying -- is used here as strong circumstantial evidence that remaining in Venezuela was the more-regretted outcome for those with direct comparison experience of both conditions.
”
Source data from
2022-01-01
Accessed
2026-05-13
Calculation
UNHCR Venezuela situation (2022), returnee data. The 80% re-emigration intention rate among returnees provides second-order evidence for the inaction-side proxy: people who experienced both remaining in Venezuela and emigrating overwhelmingly preferred emigration. This does not directly measure regret among those who never emigrated, but it supports the directional inference that those who stayed faced substantially worse experienced outcomes than those who left.
Caveats
PROXY MEASUREMENTS ON BOTH SIDES. The proxy_only flag reflects the structural barriers to bilateral regret surveys in a crisis context: no published study directly asks Venezuelans who stayed whether they regret not having emigrated. The action-side 26% measures difficulties experienced abroad (xenophobia, undocumented status, poverty in host countries), not self-reported regret about having left Venezuela per se; most emigrants, even those struggling in host countries, do not report regretting leaving given the conditions they left behind, which means the proxy may overstate pure "I should not have left" regret while accurately capturing the share experiencing significant negative outcomes from the decision. The inaction- side 61% uses Venezuela's extreme poverty rate as a proxy for harm severe enough to generate retrospective regret; extreme poverty is not the same as expressed regret, but the 80% re-emigration intention rate among those who returned -- having compared both conditions directly -- provides substantial circumstantial support for the directional inference. The Venezuelan crisis changed materially over the period 2015 to 2025: conditions in 2023 to 2025 differ from 2016 to 2019, and partial economic stabilisation (dollarisation, reduced hyperinflation) has altered the inaction-side harm calculus somewhat. The entry is specifically framed around the 2016 to 2023 crisis period and should not be read as a statement about conditions under any specific ongoing political situation. Selection bias affects the emigrant sample: those who emigrated were systematically younger, better- educated, and had more resources than those who stayed, making direct outcome comparison across the two groups methodologically imperfect. The regret_delta of -0.35 is directional rather than precise; both proxies carry uncertainty ranges of approximately +/- 10 percentage points.
