Reasons for Homeostatic Failure in Subjective Wellbeing

Presentation to ACE12

A/Prof Robert Tanton, Dr. Itismita Mohanty, Dr. Anthony Hogan

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Structure

● Wellbeing and Subjective Wellbeing

● Homeostasis in wellbeing

● A failure of homeostasis in wellbeing

● What affects homeostatic failure

● Future work

Wellbeing

● Wellbeing includes both objective conditions of life and subjective perceptions on life

● Individual level, this includes the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual aspects of life.

● Broader level, this includes the social, material and natural environments surrounding each individual, and their interactions.

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Understanding ‘Wellbeing’

● An extension of psychological research on wellbeing and life satisfaction for individuals.

● Uses measures of subjective wellbeing: questions based on a psychological scale.

● The question asked in the HILDA is:

“All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life?”

with a rating of 0 to 10.

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Homeostasis in wellbeing

● Homeostasis is:● “the property of a system that regulates its internal environment

and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH” (Wikipedia, 2012)

● Wellbeing tends to stay around the 70 – 75 level (on a scale of 0 – 100) and exhibits a very narrow range (see Cummins, 2003, 2009)

● The mean in all 9 waves of HILDA is 7.9, (compared to about 7.5 in (AQOL).

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Homeostasis in wellbeing

Figure 1: Distribution of wellbeing question from HILDA Wave 1 to 9

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Homeostasis in wellbeingTable 1 HILDA wellbeing cumulative distribution, all 9 waves HILDA Wave Wellbeing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Average 0 0.28 0.17 0.23 0.14 0.10 0.17 0.15 0.04 0.05 0.15 1 0.49 0.36 0.43 0.27 0.25 0.37 0.34 0.18 0.40 0.34 2 1.04 0.90 0.76 0.78 0.71 0.70 0.73 0.69 0.86 0.80 3 1.92 1.71 1.60 1.60 1.41 1.37 1.47 1.29 1.58 1.55 4 3.35 3.24 3.12 2.83 2.55 2.65 2.46 2.19 2.61 2.78 5 8.71 8.81 7.21 7.26 7.16 7.75 6.91 6.17 6.86 7.43 6 14.81 15.10 13.12 13.40 13.67 13.77 13.38 12.57 13.63 13.72 7 32.10 34.58 30.73 31.97 32.88 33.87 33.28 33.10 33.18 32.85 8 61.62 64.98 62.32 63.94 66.15 66.82 67.92 67.70 67.77 65.47 9 80.55 84.60 84.85 85.29 87.11 87.66 88.19 88.70 89.22 86.24 10 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 Mean 7.95 7.86 7.96 7.93 7.88 7.85 7.85 7.87 7.84 7.89 Std Dev 1.67 1.61 1.56 1.54 1.50 1.51 1.48 1.43 1.48 1.53

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Homeostatic Failure

● When homeostasis fails to protect the wellbeing of the individual

● Sudden drop in wellbeing

● Occurs after challenges to subjective wellbeing become too much for the homeostatic system to deal with: may be due to some major life events or other factors.

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Homeostatic failure

● Source: Cummins (2009), p. 5

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Observed homeostatic failure

● Fall from above 7 to below 7

● Minimum of 2 point drop: fairly significant drop

● HILDA Data - 240 out of 7,721 people (3.1%) experienced homeostatic failure from Wave 8 to Wave 9

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Homeostatic Failure

● What can contribute to homeostatic failure?● Change in health● Change in status, eg, employment● Change in social capital – connectedness with community● Life events – death of a child, death of a partner, separation,

divorce, etc● Income – protective?

● Incremental – Burned dinner, Dog died, Lost job, House burned down, Partner left me

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Identifying what contributes to homeostatic failure

● Data● HILDA – longitudinal survey

– Able to see wellbeing from one year to the next for the same person

● Need to be able to derive change in indicators from one year to the next– Presented some problems when considering social capital – what

are the cutoffs?

● Number of major life events● Major life events identified separately

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● Analysis● Logistic regression model

– Modelling what affects the probability of homeostatic failure

● Replicate weights to calculate standard errors

Identifying what contributes to homeostatic failure

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● Results from Number of major life events

Identifying what contributes to homeostatic failure

Variable Odds Ratio

P > |t|

Number of major life events in the last year 1.384 0.155 Change in physical functioning (SF36 scale) (Physical functioning is worse in 2009)

0.934 0.850

Change in general health status (SF36 scale) (Health status is worse in 2009)

2.294 0.006

Change in leisure time (Satisfied with leisure time in 2008 but dissatisfied with leisure time in 2009)

3.372 0.000

Change in amount of voluntary work (Satisfied with amount of voluntary work in 2008 but dissatisfied in 2009)

0.534 0.112

Change in household health status – 1, 2 or 3 people in household changed

2.018 0.000

Change in employment status to at least 1 person unemployed and no-one employed

2.432 0.191

Equivalised disposable household income in 2009 0.985 0.002

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● Results from all major life events

Identifying what contributes to homeostatic failure

Variable Odds Ratio

P > |t|

Married 0.592 0.221 Separated 4.807 0.001 Birth of a child 0.293 0.000 Serious personal injury/illness 1.646 0.184 Serious injury/illness of family member 0.826 0.600 Death of spouse or child 1.813 0.591 Death of close relative/family member 0.658 0.281 Victim of physical violence 1.334 0.765 Retired from workforce 1.340 0.531 Fired or made redundant 1.671 0.485 Changed jobs 1.509 0.357 Major worsening in finances 1.026 0.955 Changed residence 0.525 0.238 Reduction in physical functioning (SF36 scale) 0.888 0.746 Reduction in general health status (SF36 scale) 2.235 0.011 Change in leisure time (Satisfied with leisure time in 2008 but dissatisfied with leisure time in 2009)

3.450 0.000

Change in amount of voluntary work (Satisfied with amount of voluntary work in 2008 but dissatisfied in 2009)

0.578 0.194

Change in household health status – 1, 2 or 3 people in household changed

2.019 0.000

Change in employment status 2.108 0.376 Equivalised disposable household income in 2009 0.985 0.001

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Discussion

● Only 2 significant life events affect homeostatic failure● Separation (higher probability)● Birth of a child (lower probability)

● All other major life events (death of a child/relative, physical violence, fired from job)

● Health of yourself and your family has significant impact on homeostatic failure● Consistent with other work on health and wellbeing

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Discussion

● Amount of leisure time has a significant impact● Possibly through stress in job

● Income is protective● Can use income to purchase goods and services to protect you

from homeostatic failure

NATSEM Working Paper-18

● This would be available as NATSEM Working Paper 18 and can be downloaded from

http://www.natsem.canberra.edu.au/publications/search-by-type/?publication-type=working-papers

● We are happy to take any comments on this.

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Itismita.mohanty@natsem.canberra.edu.auwww.natsem.canberra.edu.au

Questions and comments?