The standard of living and well-being of individuals - a case study of older Australians

Abstract

This thesis is about the measurement of the standard of living and well-being at an individual level. It contributes to a growing literature challenging the dominant economic paradigm that relies on disposable income and GDP as proxy individual and national standard of living indicators. Two lines of conceptual and empirical inquiry are explored. The first develops a more comprehensive measure of economic resources in line with the economic theory of consumption. The second develops a multi-dimensional well-being indicator framework based on sociological references to individual well-being. Both approaches are applied using data from Wave 10 (2010) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey to assess and compare the standard of living and well-being of older Australians, aged 65 years and over.

The economic standard of living approach is operationalised by combining fuller income and wealth economic resource components into a set of money-based metrics that determine individual potential consumption possibilities. The findings indicate that augmenting disposable income with income streams from non-cash services and annuitised wealth (particularly home wealth) substantially improves the absolute and relative economic position of older Australians. A multi-dimensional well-being indicator framework which emphasises the inter-relationship between economic and non-economic (sociological) dimensions is then constructed at an individual level. The findings indicate that, while older Australians have slightly lower overall well-being compared to non-older adults, driven primarily by declining physical health and to a lesser extent mental health, they maintain strong personal relationships, engage actively as community members and within their neighbourhood environment. There are two distinct categories of older Australians who simultaneously experience economic resource and multi-dimensional well-being advantage and corresponding disadvantage. Specifically, non-pensioners or tertiary educated older people experience an advantage; while renters, non-English speaking born or separated/divorced older people experience a corresponding disadvantage. Comparison of the two approaches shows that, for many older Australians, their measured economic resource position is only weakly associated with objective multi-dimensional well-being assessments.