Abstract
In recent years policy makers and social scientists have devoted considerable attention to wellbeing, a concept that refers to people’s capacity to live healthy, creative and fulfilling lives. Two conceptual approaches dominate wellbeing research. The objective approach examines the objective components of a good life. The subjective approach examines people’s subjective evaluations of their lives. In the objective approach how subjective wellbeing relates to objective wellbeing is not a relevant research question. The subjective approach does investigate how objective wellbeing relates to subjective wellbeing, but has focused primarily on one objective wellbeing indicator, income, rather than the comprehensive indicator set implied by the objective approach. This paper attempts to contribute by examining relationships between a comprehensive set of objective wellbeing measures and subjective wellbeing, and by linking wellbeing research to inequality research by also investigating how subjective and objective wellbeing relate to class, gender, age and ethnicity. We use three waves of a representative state-level household panel study from Queensland, Australia, undertaken from 2008 to 2010, to investigate how objective measures of wellbeing are socially distributed by gender, class, age, and ethnicity. We also examine relationships between objective wellbeing and overall life satisfaction, providing one of the first longitudinal analyses linking objective wellbeing with subjective evaluations. Objective aspects of wellbeing are unequally distributed by gender, age, class and ethnicity and are strongly associated with life satisfaction. Moreover, associations between gender, ethnicity, class and life satisfaction persist after controlling for objective wellbeing, suggesting that mechanisms in addition to objective wellbeing link structural dimensions of inequality to life satisfaction.
Highlights
Since at least the work of Aristotle, philosophers have been interested in wellbeing, understood as the qualities of a good life or a good society [1]
Third we examine how objective and subjective aspects of wellbeing are linked to structural dimensions of inequality, gender, class, age and ethnicity thereby joining the study of wellbeing with the study of social inequality. We examine these relationships in Australia, a country that is among the highest in the world in objective wellbeing, but which has not been included in previous comprehensive studies of relationships between subjective and objective wellbeing
We investigate subjective wellbeing as overall life satisfaction and economic, social and physical objective wellbeing including financial hardship, material deprivation, household income, leisure time, social connections to family and friends, and health
Summary
Since at least the work of Aristotle, philosophers have been interested in wellbeing, understood as the qualities of a good life or a good society [1]. We investigate subjective wellbeing as overall life satisfaction and economic, social and physical objective wellbeing including financial hardship, material deprivation, household income, leisure time, social connections to family and friends, and health. Previous research finds that income and subjective wellbeing are related with richer people more satisfied with their lives than poorer people [4,38] In their comprehensive analysis, Bohnke and Kohler [3] find other elements of objective wellbeing such as contact with friends and neighbors, health, and housing are positively associated with life satisfaction. Our analysis of categorical inequalities focuses on gender, class, age and ethnicity, as captured by non-English Speaking background and Indigenous status, with additional socio- demographic control variables that are likely related to objective and subjective wellbeing. The key predictors of wellbeing in our analyses are: Gender (Male, Female); Age (coded as a categorical variable: 17–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55–64, 65+); Class–based on labour force status, employment relations if employed, and occupation and skill level as classified by the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations
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