Subjective Wellbeing, Objective Wellbeing and Inequality in Australia

PLoS One. 2016 Oct 3;11(10):e0163345. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0163345. eCollection 2016.

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.

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Australia / epidemiology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Longitudinal Studies
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Personal Satisfaction*
  • Quality of Life
  • Social Class*
  • Socioeconomic Factors

Grants and funding

The dataset used in this paper was funded by the Australian Research Council under LP0775040 “The development and application of a conceptual and statistical framework for the measurement of non-market factors affecting social inequality and social wellbeing” and by the Queensland Public Sector Union. During the manuscript preparation the authors were supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (grant number CE140100027). Neither the Australian Research Council nor the Queensland Public Sector Union were involved in decision-making about the research and publication process.