LA SABIDURIA Y LAS CIENCIAS JUDAICAS

The number of possible dimensions that represent one’s life would be large, when each aspect of life is regarded as separate. From a parsimonious view, the international wellbeing group (2013) has successfully provided a manageable number of domains that share a great deal of its variance to represent one’s life as a whole. The group is an international collaborative network assembled in 2001 with the aim of developing a brief, standard Index to measure the subjective wellbeing of the population. Seven cores and one optional domain are developed and called as the PWI. It is the first level deconstruction of the question on subjective well-being - ‘How satisfied are you with your life as a whole?’ The domains are as follows (The International Wellbeing Group 2013);

 Standard of living  Health  Achievement in life  Relationships  Safety  Community-connectedness  Future security  Spiritual/religion (optional)

Each domain is defined based on a gestalt approach, admitting the imperfect relationship between the gestalt and aggregate approach (Cummins 1996). The gestalt approach explains that people are expected to be able to synthesise their views on how satisfied they are with the substantial divisions of their life. For example, when the single question of one domain like ‘How satisfied are you with your health?’ is asked, individuals would construct their own concept of health. It is then expected to bear a substantial relationship to an aggregate idea of health (Cummins 1996). The international wellbeing group admits the risks relying on the imperfect relationship between the gestalt and aggregate approaches, as different people will use their own set of components to represent life, and will weigh the components in individual ways (Cummins 1996).

There is no guiding theory on the choice of such domains, but there are two criteria to narrow the focus of domains to be the simplest conceptual construction: the domain has to be named as a broad aspect of life, while avoiding affective adjectives like ‘happiness’ (The International Wellbeing Group 2006). Each domain can be amenable to both objective and subjective measurement, although it is designed for the subjective perspectives of adult life. The PWI scale and the construction of the eight domains are verified using collective regressions against ‘satisfaction with life as a whole’, and its reliability is proved through 16 surveys of the Australian

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population, conducted from 2001 to 2006, producing a maximum variation of 3.2 percentage points in subjective well-being (Cummins 2006; The International Wellbeing Group 2006).

The use of PWI in the existing literature of lone parents’ transition

There are two pieces of quantitative survey research adopting the PWI domains to explore the subjective well-being and quality of life of lone parents making transitions from welfare to work (Cook et al. 2009; Cook 2012). Both are based on an Australian governmental programme, ‘Newstart Allowance’, which requires lone parents receiving ‘Parenting Payment’ to engage with mandatory job searches and/or training as their youngest child turns six, unless they are in paid work for over 15 hours a week from 2013 (Australian Government 2013). It poses a similar stance to that of the UK, arguing for the benefits of welfare to work for lone parents, in terms of improving finance as well as self-esteem. This seems similar to the aims of this thesis, but a little eased approach than the UK’s Lone Parents Obligation in terms of the age threshold of the youngest child, but tougher in terms of the working hour requirement.

The first study compares the quality of life of 334 single mothers to that of the general population based on 19 surveys of 2,000 adults from 2001 to 2008 (Cook et al. 2009). The study reports that single mothers have lower levels of quality of life across all domains, but more severely in the domains of future security, personal relationships, and living standards. The study also explores whether the welfare to work policy requirement would have an impact on single mothers’ well- being, and reports that those working less than 15 hours a week have higher satisfaction with their health than those working more (Cook et al. 2009). The second study examines the longitudinal changes of the subjective well-being of 136 single parents during welfare to work transitions (Cook 2012). The results show decreased levels of satisfaction in personal relationships, safety, future security, and overall subjective well-being for those in paid work, after controlling for monthly income. An income increase negatively predicts overall quality of life, while reduced income reported better PWI scores. According to Cook (2012), the increased working hours associated with negative quality of life may be due to the decreased total income after withdrawing social assistance entitlements or other subsidies. These findings are very meaningful as they directly conflict with the rationales of Australian welfare to work program, but may not translate to the UK.

The two studies provide a good reference point for this thesis. They are useful, in terms of considering ‘quality of life’ as a meaningful indicator to examine the success of the welfare to work policy as well as the transition itself. The two studies however possess some limitations. First, there still is room for discussions on the actual level of challenges created by the welfare to

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work policy requirements that may have impacted on the quality of life of single parents, as also indicated by Cook (2012). In other words, it is unanswered whether a policy requirement, working more than 15 hours a week for example, would negatively affect single mothers to the extent to be a threat to their homeostasis of subjective well-being. According to Cummins (2010), subjective well-being is controlled and protected by a psychological device, called Homeostasis. Their homeostatically protected mood is a major component of subjective well-being. It is derived from a combination of contentment, happiness, and positive arousal, but is affected by negative challenges and leads people to the clinical condition of depression. Further studies are needed to discuss whether the policy requirement is a challenge for single mothers to treat their homeostatically protected subjective well-being (Cook 2012). Second, the quantitative nature of the two studies only allows quantifiable measurements of quality of life on a scale of 0 to 10. It is insufficient to represent lone parents’ lived experiences as well as one’s life as a whole, as one’s life can be more than a quantifiable score. Therefore, it is still worthy to qualitatively explore their individual journeys while they are required to live up to the policy requirements of welfare to work.

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