Wellbeing Reflections

Adele Horin's article "Money counts but happiness lies elsewhere" in this weekend's SMH provides a neat update on trends to measure personal and national wellbeing. Her article reflects on an 86 year old personal friend who was most healthy and contented when he spent a decade looking after his wife who had Alzheimer's. GDP doesn't measure this aspect of our lives.

Australian Unity in conjunction with Deakin University has been compiling a Wellbeing Index based on surveys of how people feel. The index has run through 4 surveys from June 2001 to September 2002 with the latest survey showing Australians feeling 74% satisfied with personal and national life.

Financial Demographics is monitoring the various attempts globally to provide consistent measures of wellbeing. Meanwhile we have on this website access to Financial Demographics' "Good Times / Bad Times" Index which targets the key measurable life and money trends by year of birth. This index attempts to link indicators of financial support, personal relationships and meaningful employment appropriate to each life stage.

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