The presence of confounding effects in the study of subjective well-being (and suicide) is particularly likely in the case of place simply because people are not randomly scattered across cities. The vast majority of adults choose to live in particular locations; they ‘self select’ and for this reason we should expect different compositions of people in different cities. These differences in turn will influence how respondents in each city are distributed over the ordered categories of well- being.
The Quality of Life Survey contains a wide variety of attributes of people, which can be used as controls; characteristics such as ethnicity, health, education, labour force participation, housing tenure and income. Their averages for all respondents and young adults are presented in Table 5.3, from which I can construct a picture of the
‘average’ respondent. The most likely respondent is someone who is middle aged (46 years), female (59 percent), European (74 percent), in Very Good Health (41 percent) and living with a partner (73 percent). This most likely respondent will have an ‘Other Qualification’ between school and university (33 percent), and be equally likely to either be working fulltime (22 percent) or not looking for work (23 percent). They are likely to own or jointly own their own home (84 percent), have an average income of between $20 and $30,000 per annum and, given the way the sample is structured, they are equally likely to live in any of the 12 settlement types. In addition to the standard set of socio-economic characteristics the Quality of Life Survey also asks a variety of what are often called ‘social capital’ questions from which I conclude that the typical respondent is likely to usually trust others (59 percent), be highly likely to say they belong to a club or church or similar society (31 percent). Most will agree it is important to feel a sense of community (72 percent) but considerably less (61 percent) actually can report feeling this way.
Table 5.3 Mean values of variables used in multivariate analysis of subjective well-being. Total sample from the 2006 Quality of Life Survey
Qn Type Variable Variable description Sample mean Young adult mean
N = 7531 N = 1278
S2 Demographic ageinyears Age 46 22
agesq Age(squared) 2338 497 S3 Female Female 0.59 0.55 S1 European 0.74 0.53 Maori Maori 0.13 0.18 Pacific-Island Pacific 0.06 0.16 Asian Asian 0.06 0.12
Q20 Health Poor-Health Poor 0.21 0.02
Fair-Health Fair 0.82 0.07
Good-Health Good 0.26 0.26
Very-Good Health Very Good 0.41 0.42
Excellent 0.22 0.23
Q39 Partner present Partner Partner 0.73 0.30
Q41 Education Less -than-80 Less than school certificate or less than 80 credits for NCEA level 1 (no formal qualifications)
0.11 0.11
Schoo_Certificate School certificate or NCEA level 1 0.11 0.11
NCEA2_or _HSC Sixth for certificate or NCEA level 2
Higher School certificate/higher leaving certificate National certificate/NZQA
University entrance from bursary exam 0.10 0.19
HCEA3_or_5 NZ A or B Bursary or NCEA level 3
University Scholarship or NCEA level 4 0.09 0.14
Overseas School Qualifications Trade certificate National diploma
Other_post Teaching or nursing certificate/diploma 0.33 0.23
Bachelors degree 0.16 0.16
Post-grad_ Postgraduate degree (Honours, Masters, PhD) 0.06 0.03
Other 0.04 0.04
Q16 Employment Employed fulltime (for 30 or more hours per week) 0.51 0.41
Employed_Part-time Employed part-time (for less than 30 hours per week) 0.22 0.25 Looking_for_work Not in paid employment and looking for work 0.04 0.09 Not_looking for work Not in paid employment and not looking for work 0.23 0.23
Q40 Housing tenure Owned house or apartment as individual 0.72 0.03
Jointly owned or family trust or parents or other family owned
0.12 0.05
Rented-private Private landlord who is not related owns 0.11 0.21 Rented_publics Public landlord (local authority, city council or Housing New
Zealand or other State landlord
0.04 0.05
Q42 Income Minus_or… Annual personal income before tax - minus or zero 0.82 0.12
Income_unknown Income unknown . .
Income_u_20k ….Income under $20k 0.06 0.36
Income_20-30k .…Income $20<$30k 0.23 0.12
Income 30-40k ….Income $30<$40k 0.14 0.12
Income 40-60k ….Income $40<$60k 0.14 0.12
….Income $60k plus 0.15 0.04
Q29 Trust Trust 1 You almost always can't be too careful in dealing with people
0.06 0.07
Trust 2 You usually can't be too careful in dealing with people 0.18 0.22
Trust 3 People can usually be trusted 0.59 0.55
People can almost always be trusted 0.17 0.17
Q26 Connectedness Club Not belong to sports club, church or spiritual group, hobby or interest group, community or voluntary group, online community or interest group, network of people from school or work, other.
0.31 0.07
Q24 Local communities (believe)
ComImp Do not agree or strongly agree that it is important to feel a sense of community with people in my local neighbourhood
0.28 0.36
Q24b Local communities (sense)
ComFeel I do not feel a sense of community with others in my local neighbourhood
0.39 0.52
Q15 Influence public has on Council decisions
InflCouncil Public has no influence (incl. don't know) 0.43 0.34
The typical young adult by contrast is 22 years old, female (55 percent) and contrary to the whole population considerably less likely to be European (53 percent), reporting closer identification with Māori (18 percent) or the Pacific population (16 percent). The typical young adult in the sample will exhibit no greater likelihood of being in good health than respondents in general but because of their age they will be far less likely to have a partner (30 percent) and any tertiary education. A larger proportion will be studying which is why their full-time employment rates are much lower (41 percent), and why a higher proportion are in part-time work (25 percent). Significantly, a much smaller proportion of young adults will belong to a club or society, believe local communities are important or actually feel a sense of community and far fewer believe the public has the power to influence council decisions. With these characteristics entered as controls in the model I then test for the additional statistical influence of the urban settlement in which the respondent lives.