Personal wellbeing
Wellbeing is an expression of how people and the community feel about their quality of life. The personal wellbeing index picks up seven key factors of life satisfaction (reflected in the framework’s domains) and summarises them into a globally recognised, validated and comparable, measure of how well life is going (or 'how we are doing') overall.
Personal Wellbeing Index
This measure shows how satisfied Canberrans are, on average, with their:
- standard of living
- health
- level of achievement in life
- relationships
- safety
- community connectedness
- future security.
Over the past five years, the proportion of Canberrans reporting their overall level of wellbeing as ‘healthy’ has declined, from 79.3% in 2019 to 68.9% in 2024.
Similarly, the proportion of people who reported ‘low’ overall wellbeing increased from 20.7% in 2019 to 31.2% in 2024.
Between 2023 and 2024, some decline in wellbeing occurred across all age groups, genders, household types, and across all districts, however the extent of the decline varied between groups.
In 2024, people aged 18-29 and 30-49 were more likely to have reported lower levels of wellbeing than those aged 50 and over.
The 2024 University of Canberra Living Well in the ACT Region survey showed the likelihood of having healthy wellbeing is lowest amongst:
- those who are moderately or severely restricted in everyday activities due to a long-term health condition or disability
- those who are unemployed
- renters
- single parents
- carers
- those identifying as LGBTIQA+.
Data sources
Data for this indicator are sourced from the University of Canberra Living well in the ACT Region survey. Detailed survey data, survey user guide and published reports from the survey can be accessed at https://www.regionalwellbeing.org.au/living-well-in-the-act-region/.
Chart description
Line graph of percentage of respondents who reported healthy or low levels of personal wellbeing in the ACT, by year between 2019 and 2024.
In 2024:
- 68.9% rated their wellbeing as healthy compared to 75.0% in 2023
- 31.2% rated their wellbeing as low compared to 25.0% in 2023.
Technical notes
The Living Well in the ACT Region survey, conducted by the University of Canberra, aims to measure, track and understand the wellbeing and resilience of adult residents living in the Australian Capital Territory region of Australia. It examines factors known to affect wellbeing and resilience at the individual, household, community and regional level.
When generating data for the ACT, statistical weighting is used to address differences between the sample of people who respond to the survey, and the characteristics of the ACT adult population.
Data are produced from this survey for different groups of people in the ACT. The 'overall response' category represents responses at the ACT population level. Where reliable estimates can be produced, data are also presented for Canberrans by: gender, age, cultural background, gender identity and sexuality, carer role and experience of disability. Not all differences over time or between groups are statistically significant: information on confidence intervals for the data presented here is available in data tables that can be accessed at https://www.regionalwellbeing.org.au/living-well-in-the-act-region/.
Care is needed when interpreting the differences in findings between groups as the descriptive statistics published here show where there are differences in wellbeing, but not what has caused those differences in wellbeing.
Further information about the survey can be found at Living Well in the ACT Region or by contacting regionalwellbeing@canberra.edu.au.
