The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index is the nation’s longest-running study of subjective wellbeing. The 2025 survey captured responses from more than 10,000 adults across Australia. The report maps wellbeing across all federal electorates, revealing new insights into how location, income, age and social factors shape Australians’ quality of life.

Subjective wellbeing encompasses the ways that people experience and think about their lives. Building on the first edition, these guidelines seek to improve the quality and international comparability of subjective wellbeing data. They provide data producers with the information and tools they need to measure subjective wellbeing in a robust, well-validated and internationally comparable way.

The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index monitors the subjective wellbeing of over 2,000 Australian adults. This year’s results show Australian's satisfaction with life has hit an all-time low. Satisfaction with health also slumped to an unprecedented low. Personal wellbeing scores and satisfaction with life “as a whole” both continue to remain very low.

The Australian Centre on Quality of Life at Deakin University, in partnership with Australian Unity, has been monitoring the Subjective Wellbeing of Australian adults (18+ years) for the past 22 years through the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index (AUWI). This report captures the results of Survey 40, conducted in June 2023.

This report provides insights into who is accessing the arts to improve their health and wellbeing, and how people feel about the idea of ‘arts on prescription’ – an innovative practice that seeks to improve overall wellbeing by including arts engagement as part of health treatment plans.