The Paradoxical Nature of Well-being under Capitalism: A glimpse from the SEM analysis of the 2012 Australian World Values Survey data into the social determinants of subjective well-being

This paper briefly presents the results of a quantitative analysis of data collected through the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (WVS) in 2012 in Australia. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) – a rather sophisticated statistical method to explore interrelated variables/factors and to rule out spurious correlations – is used to explore the social determinants of one of the most routine notions of well-being in the Australian context. The findings, though being based on a rather reductionist measure of Quality of Life, clearly confirm the growing concerns around the inherent paradoxes of ‘being well’ in a society dominated by the social forces of corporate capital.