Introduction
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 wellbeing 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.
WVS is one of the best-known research tools for measuring social values. It is however not principally designed for measuring sophisticated notions of wellbeing and that the variables we can choose out of the dataset are inadequate for exploring all the major dimensions and determinants of wellbeing. However, the analysis draws on the most recognized elements of subjective well-being and its results are comparable to the findings of more specialized studies. Moreover, it detects the role of less acknowledged factors and highlights what I define as the ‘paradoxical nature of capitalist wellbeing’. As thus, the analysis warrants more comprehensive studies of such relations.
In this study, subjective well-being (SW), i.e. people’s assessment of their overall quality of life, is measured based on three questions about the respondents’ self-assessed state of health ,general happiness , and overall life satisfaction .