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:

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Baltatescu:

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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

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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

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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.

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