Small area Indicators of Wellbeing for Older Australians (IWOA)

This work has identified a number of indicators of wellbeing for older people, and then brought these together into an index. This index shows that areas where older people experience low wellbeing tend to be in cities rather than regional Australia and that areas with the highest proportion of older people experiencing low wellbeing are on the outskirts of capital cities A major finding is that low wellbeing has a lot to do with housing. Housing stress contributed the most weight to the index, and rent assistance also had a very high weight. This has implications for income support policies and housing policies like rental assistance for older people. Older people still paying rent after retirement are some of the most vulnerable in our society to changes in circumstances, as a great deal of their income is going on housing costs, reducing their ability to deal with other costs like health or transport.