A Multi-dimensional Individual Well-Being Framework: With an Application to Older Australians

This paper constructs a multi-dimensional individual well-being (MIW) indicator framework to explicitly recognise the inter-relationship between economic and non-economic dimensions in encapsulating the totality of an individual's life. The MIW framework treats individual well-being as a multi-dimensional concept disaggregable into uniquely defined but latent well-being dimensions with observable indicators attached to each. A composite well-being index applicable to individual level analysis is developed through a series of intra-personal aggregative procedures. The results are based on person-level data from the household, income and labour dynamics in Australia survey and applied to an assessment of the individual well-being of older Australians, aged 65 years and over. The findings indicate that, although older Australians have slightly lower overall well-being compared to non-older adults, driven primarily by declining physical health and to a lesser extent mental health, they maintain strong personal relationships, and engage actively in their communities. More generally, the approach outlines how to quantify objective multi-dimensional assessments of individual well-being.