The Paradoxical Nature of Well-being under Capitalism: A glimpse from
the SEM analysis of the 2012 Australian World Values Survey data into
the social determinants of subjective well-being
Abstract
This paper briefly presents the results of a quantitative analysis of
data collected through the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (WVS)
in 2012 in Australia. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) – a rather
sophisticated statistical method to explore interrelated
variables/factors and to rule out spurious correlations – is used to
explore the social determinants of one of the most routine notions of
well-being in the Australian context. The findings, though being based
on a rather reductionist measure of Quality of Life, clearly confirm the
growing concerns around the inherent paradoxes of ‘being well’ in a
society dominated by the social forces of corporate capital.