Officially our lives are mostly better

That's what the ABS finds when it attempts to look beyond GDP

Our lives are - almost - better than ever; so much so that we’re spending an increasing amount of time out of the country.

The latest Bureau of Statistics annual measure of the quality of our lives shows things are getting better across a range of fronts that extend beyond the financial.

We are more healthy, more educated and more likely to be in work than a decade ago and we earn more and have more saved. But our productivity is going backwards along with our air quality and biodiversity.

The ABS admits there’s much about our standard of living it can’t yet measure. It would like to be able to report on social cohesion, democracy and governance and the quality of our land, oceans and rivers, but it hasn’t yet found an encompassing measure for each. It lists them as important in Measures of Australia’s Progress 2011 and says it’s still looking for a way to way to turn each into a number.

The number it uses for health is life expectancy at birth. An Australian girl born today can expect to live 83.9 years, 2.1 years more than a a decade before. A boy born now can expect 79.3 years, 3.1 years more than a decade ago.

The measure for education is the proportion of people aged 25 to 64 years with a vocational or higher education qualifications... It has climbed from 50 to 63 per cent over the past decade driven mainly by a jump in the proportion with a university degree from 18 to 27 per cent.

The Bureau finds the unemployment rate the most useful measure of the likelihood of being in work. Even after increasing in recent months it is still far lower than it was a decade ago at 5.3 per cent, down from 6.8 per cent.

Income per person has soared 22 per cent above inflation in the past decade, even after tapering off in response to the global financial crisis. Wealth per person has climbed from $285,700 to $308,500 after adjustment for inflation - a jump of 8 per cent.

The Bureau’s encompassing measure for housing - rental affordability for low income earners - has stayed roughly flat for the past decade. The proportion of gross household income handed over in rent remains steady at 28 per cent.

Productivity - regarded as steady in the Bureau’s last update published a year ago - is now clearly heading down. The Bureau says its broadest measure, multi-factor productivity, is going backwards at the rate of 1 per cent per year.

The indicator thought to best point to biodiversity in native plants, animals and organisms is the number of threatened fauna species. It has climbed from 332 to 432 over the past decade. Just under half are listed as vulnerable and around two-fifths endangered or critically endangered.

Greenhouse gas emissions - the indicative measure of air quality - have climbed 13 per cent over the decade to 2009 from 483.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to 545.8 million tonnes. The good news is that they have slipped below their peak of 550.8 million tonnes in 2008.

Separately-released figures show we are fleeing the country as never before. A record 664,900 of us left Australia for short-term holidays or work in August, meaning that if each remained out of the country for a month all through August 1 in every 34 Australians would have been outside the country.

Departures were nowhere near matched by visitors coming in. Only 491,000 visitors came this way in August. Visitor numbers haven’t hit 500,000 since last November.

Published in today's SMH


IMPROVING

HEALTH
Life expectancy of newborn up 2.6 years

EDUCATION
Proportion of 25-64 year olds with higher qualifications up from 50% to 63%

WORK
Unemployment rate down from 6.8% to 5.3%

INCOME
Real national income per person up from $37,400 to $45,600

WEALTH
Real national net worth per person up from $285,700 to $308,500


STAYING STEADY

HOUSING
Rental affordability for low income households unchanged


GETTING WORSE

PRODUCTIVITY
Multifactor productivity sliding since 2003-04

BIODIVERSITY
Number of threatened fauna species up from 332 to 432

ATMOSPHERE
Greenhouse gas emissions up 13%


ABS Measures of Australia's Progress, Changes over past decade



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It's getting better all the time. Really. Nearly.

Ten years ago as athlete Cathy Freeman lit the torch at Sydney Olympic Stadium, Australians felt on top of the world. We feel flatter now, but we shouldn't. The Bureau of Statistics says in just about every way that can be measured we are better off.

Income per head has climbed 30 per cent since 2000 - that's over and above inflation. Wealth per head has climbed almost 10 per cent.

But recognising there's more to life than money the Bureau yesterday published a range of broader measures, about 40 in all, under the heading Measures of Australia’s Progress.

We're healthier than ten years ago. Boys born now can expect to live 3 years longer than back then, girls 2 years longer. The expected lifespan of a boy is approaching 80 years, a girl 84. Strangely enough we don't feel any healthier. Our self-assessed health status is little changed.

We're also better educated. The proportion of us with a post-school qualification has jumped from 49 per cent to 63 per cent. And more of us are in work, with the long-term unemployment rate sliding to half of what it was a decade ago, even after the economic crisis. We're scarcely more productive than we were with productivity sliding in recent years after climbing earlier in the decade. But the proportion of children living without an employed parent has plummeted and suicide rates have slid 30 per cent for men and 20 per cent for women.

We are also more likely to volunteer, a trend that runs counter to the United States where community service has been declining for decades, and we are making better use of women. Females made up 28 per cent of the last parliament compared to 13 per cent earlier in the decade. Around 11 per cent of our business executives are females compared to 8 per cent earlier in the decade...

And that's about where the good news stops.

According to the Bureau rent is no more affordable than it was a decade ago and houses a good deal less affordable. The proportion of homes sold to low-income Australians halved between 2004 and 2008.

And our environment is getting worse. Between 2004 and 2008 we lost a further 10 per cent of our native forest. We overfish more now than we did at the start of the decade, although not as much as in 2005 when overfishing peaked. And we are producing twice as much waste per person as we did at the start of the decade. On the other hand we are using less water, perhaps because we have to.

More of our flora and fauna are threatened than at the time of the Olympics, endangered floara species up 17 per cent and endangered fauna up 37 per cent. And our net emissions of greenhouse gases have climbed 16 per cent since the negotiation of the Kyoto protocol that was meant to bring them down.

Taken together the Bureau paints a picture of progress across a broad range of fronts, not only the financial, with the environment about the only area in which life ifs getting worse.

But we feel no better. The Bureau doesn't ask about feelings, believing that opinion surveys are for other organisations. Professor Bob Cummins of Deakin University has been compiling a wellbeing index since 2001. He says we feel no better off than we did then.

"It's an international trend within Western countries," he told The Age. "The economy and other things might get better but happiness doesn't much change."

The Westpac Melbourne Institute consumer confidence index reports a post-election slump of 5 per cent, with confidence amongst Coalition voters sliding 8 per cent to the point where optimists barely outnumber pessimists.

Although we still seem keen to spend. A healthy 57 per cent of us agreed that now was a good time to buy a major household item; 55 per cent thought it was a good time to buy a car.

Published in today's SMH





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We're trashing our future

Until now Australia has been blessed with good will from practically everywhere.

When I reported from Japan, Australia consistently came number one in surveys of the most trusted and most popular nation.

Much of it was due to the good work we put in educating future elites from from other countries.

The Columbo Plan students I studied with came away with justifiably fond memories of Australia, and Australians - memories that have cut us slack ever since.

Then, ten or so years ago we began trashing our future.

Wendy Carlisle's brilliant 4 Corners report Monday spelled out what we have done.

What is the up-and coming generation of Asian elites going to think of us when it matters?

Just asking.

Check out the program.

UPDATE: A Senate Committee is inquiring into the welfare of international students.

Submissions are welcome, due in a fortnight, August 14.

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