What Makes Us Happy?

An analysis of wellbeing between the areas where we live, revealed the happiest people in Australia tend to reside in rural and regional towns. People in rural and regional communities are more dependent on each other and therefore become a more socially cohesive group. This has a positive impact on their wellbeing. Moreover, the further towns are away from capital cities, the higher their sense of belonging, safety and security becomes.

However, people who live in remote to highly remote areas of Australia lose their ‘rural advantage’ and have a level of wellbeing no different from their city cousins.  This special analysis was completed using the Accessibility  Remote Index of Australia (ARIA) classifications. The ARIA  measures accessibility and remoteness according to access along road networks to specified ‘service centres’. This distance is then translated to a score that determines how accessible/remote the location is.

Which capital city is the happiest?

People living in Melbourne and Brisbane have the highest wellbeing of Australia’s capital cities, with Perth and Sydney lagging well behind. Melburnians and Brisbanites scored highly across a number of wellbeing indicators, with the highest levels of personal wellbeing and community connection of all the cities. Although lower than Melbourne and Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, Canberra and Darwin also rated their satisfaction with life highly.

Sydney and Perth had lower personal wellbeing and also rated significantly lower than the other capitals in terms of community connection and safety. High population density and the cost of living in Sydney is a significant factor in their lower wellbeing score.  Although Perth has similar demographics to Brisbane, their relative low wellbeing score may be due to it being the most isolated capital in the world.

The resources boom also means there is an influx of ‘outsiders’, which can be disruptive to cohesive communities.