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Subjective wellbeing in a post-communist country
Romania’s International Wellbeing Index
Sergiu Baltatescu Department of Sociology and Social WorkUniversity of OradeaRomania
Robert A. Cummins School of PsychologyDeakin University Australia
Sixth ISQOLS Conference
“Advancing Quality of Life in a Turbulent World”November 10-14, 2004
Philadelphia, U.S.
Subjective well-being in RomaniaRomania Large country (at
European scale). Low-income. Experienced a painful
transition from the communist society to the democratic political system and market economy.
Subjective well-being in Romania
Decreased almost continuously after fall of communism.
Income is a good predictor for it.
Now has one of the lowest levels in Europe.
Findings on subjective well-being in transition countries Income levels are higher determinants than in
other countries (Diener, 1994). In large Eastern European countries, cleavages
were found due to social stratification: sex, age, place of residence, ethnicity (Delhey, 2004).
Bottom-up and top-down effects included (Saris, 2001).
A group of frustrated achievers (Graham, 2002).
Objectives
1. Compare findings with results of other studies
in Romania.
2. Examine the psychometric properties of PWI
and NWI in the context of a transition country.
3. Explore the socio-demographic variations in
PWI and NW and compare with established
results and prediction of already proposed
theories.
Baltatescu:
?
Baltatescu:
?
Method: Survey
Date: November 2003Place: 16 localities, Bihor County, North-West of Romania. Selection: random route, person 18+ whose birthday comes
next Sample: general population, representative stratified, N=368Interview: at respondent’s home, with professional
interviewersInstrument: questionnaire, with PWI, NWI, socio-
demographics and other variables. Non-response rate: 30%. 8% of the cases were also
removed.Weighting: by sex, age, place of residence and ethnicity.
Comparative results: PWI
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
PWI Standard of living Health Achievements inlife
Personalrelationships
Personal safety Communityconnectedness
Future security
Australia Ireland Romania Algeria
! !
As expected, levels are lower than in Australia or Ireland, but higher than in Algeria
Exceptions: Personal relationships, Community connectedness
Tentative explanation: different levels of individualism/colectivism
Comparative results: NWI
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
NWI Economic situation State of theenvironment
Social conditions Government Business National security
Australia Ireland Romania Algeria
As (again) expected, levels are lower than in Australia or Ireland, but higher than in Algeria
Exception: National Security (similar levels with the first two countries)
Tentative explanation: Recent admission of Romania in OTAN
Overview: PWI and Life as a whole
50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
Personal relationships
Community connect.
Personal safety
Future security
Health
Achievements in life
Standard of living
PWI
Life as a whole
Personal relationships items: highest ratings
Achievements and standard of living: lowest ratings
Reversed items order compared with Australia.
PWI and Life as a whole also in reverse order compared with Australia.
Overview: NWI and Life in Romania
20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
National security
State of the environment
Business
Economic situation
Social conditions
Government
NWI
Life in Romania
National security:
highest rating
Government:
lowest rating
Same order like in Australia, except Economic situation
NWI and Life in Romania in same order compared with Australia.
Discussion International comparison gave the expected
results, except the highest levels ratings to relationship items in Romania.
Individualism/collectivism levels may be an explanation for this, but why is not the case for Algeria?
Theory of wellbeing homeostasis (Cummins) adequately predicts the difference between personal and national wellbeing items.
The “gold standard” for subjective well-being does not fits Romania.
Discussion On the other hand, well-being homeostasis
theory does not predict a lower level of ‘Life as a whole’ in comparison with PWI found in Romania.
Cummins (2003) explain the opposite relationship – found in Australia - by the fact that domains with higher degree of specificity does not benefit of the psychological self-serving bias like ‘life as a whole’.
The contrary result in the Romanian case (but similar with that of Algeria) may be a sign that there is a more complex relationship here.
Distribution by gender
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
PWI Life as a whole NWI Life in Romania
Male Female
Overall, no significant gender differences were found!
Differences in PWI & Life as a whole may be significant for a larger sample.
Most plausible explanation: this is the single case where weighting of the file altered results: in original file, no difference was found.
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
PWI Life as a whole NWI Life in Romania
18-34 35-54 over 55
Distribution by age groups
Highest ratings of PWI are those of young peoples (18-34), lowest of older age (55+)
Confirm previous findings in Eastern European countries: older peoples were most affected by economic transition, while young peoples had the best resources to resist hardships.
Significant differences were found, but only for PWI and NWI.
For Life as a whole and Life in Romania, similar differences, but no statistically significant.
Overall, results opposed to those from Australia!
For NWI, exactly the reversed distribution: young peoples were less satisfied.
Tentative explanations (not exclusive!):
Young peoples:
1. Have higher standards.
2. Had not got time to adapt their views to the circumstances.
3. Have lower social positions.
4. Have a culture of dissatisfaction with present establishment.
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
PERSONAL WELLBEINGINDEX
Life as a whole NATIONAL WELLBEINGINDEX
Life in Romania
Primany or Gymnasium Professional High school University
Distribution by educational status
Educational status clearly discriminate between PWI levels, while only those with university credentials have significantly higher ratings for Life as a whole.
Significant differences were found only for PWI and those with university credentials for Life as a whole.
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
PWI Life as a whole NWI Life in Romania
Not married Married/free union Divorced/Vidowed
Distribution by marital statusAs predicted in the literature, married peoples show highest levels of subjective wellbeing and also give highest ratings to PWI.
Giving the small size of the sample, differences in wellbeing between married and non-married were not found to be significant.
Differences in National Wellbeing were also found to be non-significant.
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Personal Wellbeing Index Life as a whole National Wellbeing Index Life in Romania?
1st quartile 2nd quartile 3rd quartile 4th quartile
Distribution by quartiles of household income in equivalent adults
Equivalent adults, computed after National Statistics formula, helps to better approximate the real income of a household.
Both PWI and Life as a whole increase significantly as household income grows from a quartile to another.
For the National Wellbeing items, to be in the forth quartile makes a positive difference.
Discussion
Findings confirmed those from all societies in general and from transition society in particular.
In all cases, PWI is at least equally sensitive to socio-economic positions of individuals than “life as a whole”.
In 2 cases, it is even more sensitive than “life as
a whole”.
Psychometric proprieties: PWI
B Sig t
1. Life as a whole
2. Standard of living .48 .47 .003. Health .04 .05 .244. Achievements in life .15 .16 .005. Personal relationships .13 .11 .016. How safe you feel .01 .01 .907. Community connectedness .05 .05 .318. Future security .11 .11 .03Adj R² = .59
R square of the model is higher than in case of Australia
Huge beta weight for Standard of living: 0.47
Consistent with literature about income in poor countries, although the magnitude is unexpected.
All other items share small parts of subjective wellbeing variations.
Health, safety and community connectedness does not contribute significantly to the dependent variable.
Table 1. Regression of personal domains against Life as a whole
Psychometric proprieties: NWI
Same explanation as in the
case of PWI.
All other items share small
parts of Life in Romania
variation.
Environment, Business and
National Security does not
contribute significantly to the
variation of the dependent
variable.
Table 2. Regression of national domains against Life in Romania
B Sig.
Economic 0,47 0,43 0,00Environment 0,04 0,04 0,41Social 0,19 0,17 0,00Governed 0,15 0,17 0,00Business -0,01 -0,01 0,91 National Security 0,08 0,08 0,06Adj R² = .53
•Similar beta weight for Economic situation: 0.43.
•R square of the model is also higher than in case of Australia.
Psychometric proprieties: Factorial structure
Both indexes items were introduced in a Principal Component Analysis.
Results were rotated using Varimax method with Kaiser Normalization.
Three factors emerged, but the third factor is weak (eigenvalue is around 1.05).
When requesting the 2-factor solution, the results clearly dissociate National from Personal items.
Table 3. Principal Component analysis of NWI and PWI items.
Factor 1 Personal
WB
Factor 2 National
WBLife as a whole 0,72 0,33
Standard of living 0,69 0,34
Health 0,62 0,01
Achievements in life 0,71 0,24
Personal relationships 0,74 0,06
Personal safety 0,77 0,2
Community connectedness 0,75 0,07
Future security 0,74 0,3
Life in Romania 0,37 0,71
Economic situation 0,19 0,85
State of the environment 0,23 0,58
Social conditions 0,22 0,81
Government 0 0,66
Business 0,12 0,77
National security 0,13 0,61
Variance explained 41.84 14.72Total variance explained =
56.57%
Discussion
Both indexes show good psychometric proprieties also in the Romanian context.
Standard of living and Economic situation items capture most part of variation in Life as a whole and Life in Romania, respectively.
Thus, unlike in Australian case, one item is the most important predictor, and some items are explaining practically nothing.
Question to be further answered: are some of items not important or their variation is simply obscured by the influence of the economic variables?
Conclusions
Levels of subjective well-being in Romania: Cannot be included in the “gold standard”. As expected: lower than first-world countries,
higher than third-world. Higher ratings for personal relationships
domains. Distributions by socio-demographical variables: In many cases different than in Australia. But very similar to other findings in post-
communist countries.
ConclusionsIndexes of well-being: Good psychometric proprieties. Not all personal/national variables are predictors of
PWI/NWI. Are there special items (not included) that fit post-
communist transition countries?
Theories Wellbeing homeostasis theory perform well on
Romanian data. Some facts are still unexplained and should be
further researched.
Reference listBălţătescu, S. (2001). Quality of life in Romania. Paper presented at Euromodule
Workshop, Wissensfchaft Zentrum Berlin.Bălţătescu, S. (2003). Stability of Happiness in a Changing Society: A Latent Growth
Analysis on a Romanian Panel Data. Paper presented at the Fifth ISQOLS Conference, Frankfurt, Germany.
Bălţătescu, S. (2004). Determinanţi ai satisfacţiei cu viaţa în perspectivă transsecţională. In C. Zamfir & E. Zamfir (Eds.), Starea societăţii româneşti. Volumul conferinţei anuale a Asociaţiei Române de Sociologie şi a Asociaţiei Române de Promovare a Asistenţei Sociale, Oradea, Ed. Universităţii din Oradea.
Brownlee, C., & O’Neill, G. (2003). Quality of Life in Ireland. St. Patrick's Festival Symposium.
Cummins, R. A. (1998). The Second Approximation to an International Standard for Life Satisfaction. Social Indicators Research, 43.
Cummins, R. A., Eckersley, R., Pallant, J., van Vugt, J., & Misajon, R. (2003). Developing a National Index of Subjective Wellbeing: The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index. Social Indicators Research, 64(2), 159-190.
Cummins, R. A., & Nistico, H. (2002). Maintaining Life Satisfaction: The Role of Positive Cognitive Bias. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3(1), 37-69.
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Diener, E. 1994. "Assessing Subjective Well-Being - Progress and Opportunities." Social Indicators Research 31:103-157.
Graham, C., & Pettinato, S. (2002). Frustrated achievers: Winners, losers and subjective well-being in new market economies. Journal of Development Studies, 38(4), 100-140.
Hofstede, G. H. (2001). Culture's consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif. ; London: SAGE.
Mărginean, I. (1991). Percepţia calităţii vieţii - cadrul metodologic al cercetării. Calitatea Vieţii, 2(3-4), 123-126.
Mărginean, I. (2002). Calitatea vieţii percepute în România. In I. Mărginean & A. Bălaşa (Eds.), Calitatea vieţii in România (pp. 61-108). Bucureşti: Expert.
Open Society Romania. (1994-2004). Public Opinion Barometer. Bucharest.
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