Living in a wealthy, safe, stable city may be bad for your wellbeing 

by Alison Cameron

Thursday, March 24, 2005

smh.com.au

It is tough crying to work out if life is good. It is usually only when some thing goes wrong that you realise it used to 
be great. For many of us, peer comparison is a useful way to judge how we are travelling.

We check to see if our cars are in the same price bracket and if our children are on the same school waiting lists. If we have a similar quality of living to our mates, we reason, then we must be doing all right.

We also like to be reassured on an inter national level. It is with a warm, smug glow that we read a recent report from the human resources group Mercer telling us that Sydney is in the top 10 cities in the world for quality of living. It is one of the few times when just physically being somewhere can be made to feel like an achievement. 

But good quality of living doesn't always mean good quality of life, even if the terms are often used as though they were interchangeable. A city with a high quality of living is almost always secure and stable. These are also attributes which can make a place mind-numbingly dull. To find a better quality of life you might need to move somewhere a little less safe but more vibrant and exciting. The world of advertising treats the two ideas as though they are one and the same. 

Advertising continually tells us that quality of life comes only if you have a good standard at quality of living. The ad executives job is to lay out what we need to achieve it and our role is to meekly go and buy it. 

But the head of the Australian Centre on Quality of Life, Professor Bob Cummins, says the two concepts are different and we confuse them at our peril: "Most people think that there is a simple relationship between quality of living and quality of life. In fact that is very far from the truth. This error underpins the whole discipline of economics, which makes the 
assumption that wealth is a proxy for happiness."

This mistake has led economists to Perpetuate the idea that if you make countries richer you make people happier. "It just ain't so", says Cummins. 

Economists are now grappling with this truth, trying to find new models that work not only an paper but m the real world where people, due to emotions and feelings, don't always respond in a predictable manner.

But governments are still holding on tightly to their belief that standard of living is the same as well-being.

Governments are all about being re-elected and it is easier to argue that people's salaries have gone up, and that's good, than try to explain that people may have more money but are no better off in terms of personal wellbeing. 

Equally, businesses have an easier time coming to grips with tax matters than workplace policies which may affect the quality of life of employees. 

Quality of life feels subjective and difficult to pin down, but it is not impossible. The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index is a national survey which has been conducted every two to six months since 2001. It acts as a barometer of our satisfaction with life.

It is an efficient tool to gauge whether our quality of life is rising or dropping. If governments begin to investigate the realities of quality of life thin perhaps the electorate will star to view the index as something as relevant as the gross domestic product. This could lead to some interesting electoral pledges: "We will make you poorer, but happier."

Constantly worrying about our quality of living has obscured our vision of what we want. We are too afraid to work fewer hours because we won't be able to buy as much. But if we didn't work as hard, the chance are our quality of life would increase.

Thinking more about others and worrying less about ourselves may also benefit our well-being. A study last year from Britain's Economic and Social Research Council found that people who lived in areas where there was a high level of voluntary work also reported a better quality of life. 

When it comes to personal happiness the old adage is true: it really is finer to give than to receive. Quality of life may be there for the taking, but to achieve it we may have to let go of our quality of living. Economists are beginning to recognise that money really doesn't buy you happiness, writes Alison Cameron.

Alison Cameron is a Sydney freelance Journalist.

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