Wellbeing Watch: a monitor of health, wealth and happiness in the Hunter

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Wellbeing Watch a monitor of health, wealth and
happiness in the Hunter
Shanthi Ramanathan
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Agenda

• Summary of the rationale
• Main research questions
• Methods
• Define wellbeing as used in this study
• Key findings
• Where to from here..

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Why measure wellbeing?

• What is wellbeing?
• Why do we need this new information?
• Arent standard economic measures like income,
  interest rates and unemployment rates sufficient?
• Strong regional economy people are doing well?

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Limitations of current economic measures

• Divergence between movements in economic
  indicators and trends in community happiness and
  satisfaction
• Despite sustained economic growth, satisfaction
  with life in Australia is deteriorating
• There have been substantial increases in mental
  illnesses such as depression
• Economic measures useful during early stages of
  economic development

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Additional imperatives to measure wellbeing

• Wellbeing itself has positive outcomes including
  economic outcomes
• High wellbeing is linked to better performance,
  higher incomes, better relationships, health and
  longevity
• Monitoring wellbeing has beneficial consequences
  for making policy decisions

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Questions to be answered

• How are Hunter residents living?
• How do Hunter residents rate their wellbeing?
• What are key factors that influence the wellbeing
  of Hunter residents?
• What are the key predictors of wellbeing for the
  Regions residents?
• Is wellbeing of the Regions residents improving
  or declining?

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Key dimensions included in this study

• Institutional social support
• Crime and safety
• Housing
• Environment
• Transport
• Leisure time

• Wealth
• Education
• Employment
• Health
• Family
• Neighbourhood and community

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Summary of methods

• Questionnaire mix of existing, modified and new
  questions
• Study design cross-sectional survey of random
  householders aged 18 years and over with a home
  telephone line
• Population Residents in the Hunter (Group 1) and
  remainder of NSW (Group 2)
• Data collection method telephone survey
• Number of interviews Hunter1500 and Remainder
  of NSW500
• Response rate 61.3 per cent.

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Wellbeing as defined in this study

• What does wellbeing mean?
• The wellbeing index
• How happy a person felt
• How satisfied a person was with their life
• How valued a person felt

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Results and findings

• Wellbeing of Hunter residents
• Key findings from the following dimensions
• Income and wealth
• Health
• Family and social relationships
• Work life balance
• Crime and safety
• Environment
• Key predictors
• Important education findings

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Hunter residents by Wellbeing Index
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Income and assets and wellbeing

• More wealth ? more happiness
• Relative wealth more happiness
• Relative wealth level of income and value of
  assets in comparison to family and friends

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Relative wealth by wellbeing index
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Shortage of money

• 44 of Hunter residents had been short of money
  on at least one occasion in the last 12 months.

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As a result of being short of money..

?
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Ability to raise money in an emergency

• Just over 7 of Hunter residents were unable to
  raise 2000 in a week.

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Ability to raise money and liquidity by wellbeing
index
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Health and wellbeing

• Measures of health
• Self-assessed health status subjective measure
• Medically diagnosed objective measure of health
• Health risk behaviours
• Many associations between health and wellbeing

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Self- assessed health status by wellbeing index
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Medical conditions by wellbeing index
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Smoking by wellbeing index
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Exercise by wellbeing index
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Family, other social relationships and wellbeing

• The need to have close, committed and long-term
  relationships is a fundamental human need and
  wellbeing depends on this need being well met
  Baumeister and Leary,1995

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Relationship status by wellbeing index
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Not in a current relationship

• Previously married are more likely to
• have access to lt 20k a year
• unable to raise 2000 in an emergency
• to have poor to fair self-assessed health status
• have a diagnosed disability or disease
• Never been married
• male
• unemployed
• short of money in past 12 months

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Living arrangements and wellbeing

• 43 were living with other adults
• 41 were living with other adults and children
• 4 were sole parents with children and
• 12 were living alone

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Living arrangements by wellbeing index
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Living arrangements

• Sole parents
• 68 have access to lt 40k a year,
• 65 aged 30 to 49 prime of life
• 79 female.
• Those living alone
• 68 have access to lt 40k a year
• 44 were over 65 years
• equally distributed 49 males and 51 females.

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Relationships in times of need

• About 95 of Hunter residents had someone within
  their family they could talk to if they had a
  problem or go to for support in times of need

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Supportive relationships by wellbeing index
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Parenting and the work life balance

• No direct association between parenting and
  wellbeing
• 45 of the Hunter workforce combine work with
  parenting.
• Of these
• 56 parenting had not interfered with their
  work commitments in the previous month,
• 33 interfered less than 5 times
• 11 interfered 5 times or over

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Access to leave by income
SOURCE HVRF,2006
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Crime, safety and wellbeing

• 90 of Hunter residents were satisfied with the
  neighbourhood they lived in
• Approximately 5 of residents had experienced a
  home break-in or attempted break-in or had been
  threatened with or had physical force or violence
  used against them in the past 12 months
• Almost 48 percent of residents perceived that
  there were problems from crime or people creating
  a public nuisance in their local neighbourhood

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Experience and perceptions of crime by wellbeing
index
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Perceived problems in the local neighbourhood
?
?
?
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Environment and wellbeing

• Spending time in the natural environment
  contributes to wellbeing
• 85 percent of residents in the Region had visited
  at least one of these outdoor spaces in the
  previous four weeks

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Visiting outdoor spaces
?
SOURCE HVRF,2006
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What else makes a Hunter resident well?

• Not being unemployed
• Higher job satisfaction
• Enjoyable work within 50 kms of home
• Affordable housing in the local area
• Home ownership
• ? health status compared with 12 months ago
• Perception of weight as just right
• Not facing any barriers when accessing GP
  services

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Key predictors of wellbeing

• Logistic Regression
• Three best predictors of wellbeing
• Relative wealth (combination of relative assets
  and relative income)
• Self-assessed health status
• Relationship status

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Educational attainment and attitudes towards
education in the Hunter
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Completion of Year 12 by age group
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Year of schooling and post-school qualifications
by income
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Attitudes to education
?
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Limitations

• Wellbeing index may not fully measure the
  wellbeing concept
• Other factors not included in this study may be
  significant predictors of wellbeing
• Telephone survey method excludes those without
  home telephones

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Conclusions

• Many factors are associated with wellbeing
• There are 3 key predictors of wellbeing in the
  Hunter
• Residents in the Hunter and remainder of NSW have
  a fairly high level of wellbeing State
• Around 80 of Hunter residents have high
  wellbeing
• Remaining 20 have low levels of wellbeing
• Further analysis is required to describe this low
  wellbeing group

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Where to from here

• Further analysis of the data will continue
• Current questionnaire has been refined, modified
  and expanded
• Next round of data collection commenced yesterday
• Next release will include time series comparisons