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Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the twenty second of February.
I'm Zara, I'm Emma on today's podcast. Young Australians are more likely to experience loneliness and psychological distress than any other age group. That's according to the latest Kilda report, and that stands for household income and labor dynamics in Australia. For twenty years, Hilda has been interviewing the same network of seventeen thousand Australians every year to compile results to
give us comprehensive insight into the lives of Australians. So to help us understand more about what the latest findings tell us about young Aussies, I'm talking to one of the experts behind the data in today's deep dive. But first, Zara, what's making headlines today.
Wages in Australia increase by four point two percent in the year to December twenty twenty three, according to the latest data from the ABS. It's the highest wage figure since March two thousand and nine. Workers in the healthcare industry saw the biggest increase in wages, while growth was slower over the year in sectors like finance and insurance. The four point two percent increase means rising wages slightly outpaced rising prices for December, with inflation at four point one percent.
Environment Minister Tanya plibisec has repeated threats to regulate fast fashion. In a speech this week, Plibisec reaffirmed the government's commitment to the proposed Seamless initiative, which hopes to improve clothing recycling and would be funded by a four percent levy on garments sald. Plibisek said that if retailers don't change
their practices, the government will intervene. The minister said it's the responsibility of government and the fashion industry to examine how to boost sustainability practices and extend the lifespan of clothing.
Thousands of junior doctors in South Korea have quit their jobs in protest against plans to increase medical school student numbers. The South Korean government proposed the measure to address a doctor shortage in the country, but doctors have argued the boosting medical school admissions will compromise the quality of South
Korea's medical education and services. Mass walk offs have stretched the country's health system, with patients being transferred between hospitals to accommodate surgery schedules.
And today's good news, rooftop solar panels are expected to generate enough power for twenty million homes by twenty fifty four. According to new data. Research from Green Energy Markets predicts that over the next thirty years, sola will produce enough energy to meet one hundred percent of the current demand on the grid. In the past decade, rooftop solar panel installation has increased by three hundred and eighty percent.
The latest findings from the Hilda Survey were published this month and they reveal some interesting and concerning trends when it comes to the well being of young people. Emma, we often hear very interesting research and findings discussed in the media, So why did you want to talk about this one specifically?
That's right, So I wanted to shine a light on this one study in particular because it's pretty unique. I don't know if the average person necessarily realizes, but when you hear about a study in the media, you could be talking about a sample size of one hundred or
two hundred or a few hundred people. The Hilda Survey works with seventeen thousand respondents to provide I this picture of what's going on in the lives of Aussie's by asking those same people every year and their networks about things like their finances, family and social life, and their physical and mental health. But I thought we might need to bring in one of the experts on this one. So you are about to hear my conversation with Professor
Roger Wilkins. He's co director of the Hilda Survey project and Deputy director of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, and he joins us, now we're talking today about the Hilda Survey. But to start off with, for those of us maybe less familiar with the survey and what it's all about, can you give me a sense of how it works, because it's quite a remarkable scope, isn't it. Yeah.
So HILDA stands for the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia study. So we started back in two thousand and one and randomly selected thirteen thousand people from around the country and interviewed them, and then we've been going back to them every year ever since, so the last we're in our twenty fourth year of doing this now and asking them about all aspects of life in Australia, really the household and family life, their health and well being,
their employment, their incomes, their wealth. The other thing though, we do is that we follow the children of the original response. If they have any children, we start following them, and then we'll follow their children. So you really get the Hilda gene when you're selected into our sample and you pass it on to your kids, and hopefully if Hilda is still going in one hundred years time, we'll have this extraordinarily rich intergenerational history for Australia.
What's the ask of that sample size? How much do they have to communicate? How in depth is the survey we have we call.
A household questionnaire, where that's usually around about ten minutes. It's asked of one household member, and then everyone over fifteen years of age is interviewed for about thirty five forty minute and then they have a what we call a self completion questionnaire, which can be either pen and paper or they can do that online, and that usually takes at least half an hour as well, and so that's an annual event, a bit like doing your taxes.
It just comes around every year. And I think a lot of people they recognize the importance of the study and that each of them represent twelve hundred other people living in Australia, and I think a lot of people just do it out of a sense of a civic duty.
I'd like to think it's probably a lot less arduous than tax time. I think you're cutting yourself short of it. Then, in terms of the latest findings, we've had a report out this month. What were the big standouts from the latest survey.
Probably the most concerning thing to come out of the study is the rise in a measure of what we call psychological distress, where you are feeling hopeless or worthless or depressed, those sorts of things. And on this measure, we've seen a real substantial rise since around about twenty eleven, and it's been particularly concentrated amongst teenagers and people in their early twenties, where we've had more than a doubling
of the prevalence. We've now got about forty percent of people in the fifteen to twenty four age range that are in psychological distress. All this rise has happened since twenty eleven. It did accelerate a bit during COVID, which is perhaps unsurprising. Wasn't a great time to be a young person in Australia during the first couple of years of lockdowns and restrictions on travel and the like. But it's a longer running trend than that, and we don't
exactly know why it's growing. But I think you'd have to say social media would be pretty strongly implicated, because it's the rise in social media use really correlates very closely with this rise in psychological distress, and we also see that the groups who have the biggest increases in psychological distress prevalence are also the ones that had the biggest increase in social media use.
To ask you about another prevalent issue for young people, loneliness. It's a conversation we've been having more and more, especially on the other side of COVID. What did the survey learn about young people and loneliness most recently?
Yeah, So traditionally he would have had shown that it was older people who were tended to be more lonely, and that's sort of consistent with particularly single older people who maybe their partner has died, they're a widow or widower. And what we've actually seen over the last twenty plus years is decline in loneliness amongst older people in the community, which is obviously a heartening development. But again encountering that is we've actually seen it going up amongst young people.
It was only edging up slowly up until COVID hit, but then in the first two years of the pandemic it shot up dramatically for fifteen to twenty four year olds and not really much for other age groups. I think that's speaks a lot to the fact that the pandemic and the restrictions that a company have had a lot more adverse impacts on young people than they did on older people. I think that's because their social interaction is much more outside of the home than it is
for other people. Particularly if you're living with a partner, Much of your social interaction is with your partner, and so lockdowns and restrictions on travel and so on didn't interfere with that, whereas for people in their late teens and early twenties, the restrictions were much more punitive.
Why do you think that younger group hasn't been able to bounce back in this area, perhaps as other age groups have on the other side of COVID.
It is a concern that they may not have rebounded as quickly. And I guess because those formative links social networks perhaps got broken during COVID, you know, they got seven or they didn't form during COVID, and that could have permanent, sort of scarring type effects on the social lives of many young people. Obviously not all young people, but perhaps a significant number of them. And that would be the fear. I suppose that you could get this long tail of adverse effects.
Speaking of young people and newer phenomenons. We had vaping data, I think for the first time in this Hilda report. What did you learn about the use of vapes?
Unsurprisingly that vape use is quite highly prevalent in the community, at least prior to the beginning of this year. The government moved to ban vapes other than via a medical prescription. This data relates to the period before that legislation was passed. It's mostly an activity associated with young people, so I think we're sort of around a third of young people
have at least tried vaping. It sort of suggests that perhaps the progress we thought we'd made on reducing nicotine dependence in the form of smoking has been a little bit undone by the rise of vaping. Cost has probably been a big fator. I think it's a lot cheaper, or at least it was a lot cheaper to vape than it was to smoke, and it's not as smelly as either, so that might also be an attractive feature for many people.
What about financial stability security? What did this latest report tell us about money and young people? You know, we're hearing over and over again about the growing pressures of cost of living. Everyone's feeling it. What did we learn this time around.
We've seen I guess there's something of a continuation of a trend where more and more young adults are staying living with the parents, and I think that is very much driven by cost of living consideration and a particularly difficulty in getting into the housing market. But also it is taking longer to get established in your career. So many people eventually get into full time work and get
on the career ladder, but it's taking longer. They're spending more time working casual jobs or jumping from fixed term contract to fixed term contract. And so on, so that causing people to I think, stay in the family home longer. So it's a little bit gloomy for young people and that we're used to it, that it's taken longer. But there is a positive dimension to this as well, and that to some extent there maybe isn't the same pressure to get on with it as quickly as it once was.
That young people are saying, well, we've got you know, our life expectancy is longer than ever. People are retiring later than ever. Maybe I'll just enjoy my younger years a bit more before I get down to the serious business of adulting, forming a family and buying a home and getting full time work.
I think a lot of people will feel probably reassured by this notion that there is an increase in young people living at home for longer. I think since COVID, people have maybe carried a bit of shame around something like that. So I suppose talking about it, or seeing that reflected in these numbers will probably ease a lot of people that might be feeling maybe a little insecure about admitting to their friends that they've gone back to mom and dads.
That's right. I think that can really help with people's ability to cope with the adversity that they've been through, just to know that others are in the same boat. Sure.
One last question I wanted to ask you, Roger, is about decline in marriages, but an increase in de facto relationships. What does that mean? What is a de facto relationship and what do we know about the rate of marriage?
Yeah, so, I mean often it's called de facto marriage. What it means is that you're living together with a partner, but you're not legally married. In the eyes of the law, you're basically treated as equivalent to legally married. And yes, as you said, we've had the last twenty plus years, we've had a decline in the proportion of adults who are legally married. It's gone down from about fifty six percent or about fifty percent over twenty years. Marriage is
still really popular, but that's still an appreciable decline. But it doesn't mean we're partnering less or living with partners any less. It's just that we've had this rise in de facto couples. And I think there's a few things that work there. I think, firstly, just going to what
I was saying before about doing things later. There's a lot of people in their twenties now in de facto relationships, so twenty years ago would have been legally married, and a lot of those people in those de facto couples will eventually get married. I'll just do it later, they'll do it in their thirties. But we are seeing a
rise in de facto couples at all ages. So I think there's also a social change here that it used to be consocially unacceptable in many circles, at least to be living with a partner out of wedlock, and certainly to have children out of wedlock was frowned upon, and I think that we've got past that to a considerable extent.
There's often a lot of expense in getting married. There's a lot of pressure if you're going to get married, to have a big wedding, and people might say, well, we don't really need that piece of paper, and I think we can do something better with that money than pour it into a wedding, like you know, help get
a depositor on a house, for example. In this age of Instagram and so on, there's possibly even greater pressure to do a wedding in style, which makes it instagrammable, and that then increases the expense of it and makes it even less an attractive proposition. So I think all those sorts of things are going on. I don't know how much to attribute to each of those factors, but I think they're all playing a role.
It hazard a guess that there may even be a fair chunk of traumatized children of divorce who are taking their time in that department.
Yes. Yeah, although the big rise in divorce was actually in the seventies, you know, following the introduction of no fault divorce, we're actually seeing that once people do get married, the rate of divorce is declining amongst them, and even in de facto couples, we've seen a decline in the
breakdown of those relationships over the last twenty years. So yes, people have maybe being a bit more cautious in the relationships they get into that is having the benefit of those relationship're tending to be more stable.
Now, Roger, casting your mind forward based on the trends that you've seen this year, do you have any hot predictions for us for next year, anything that you're keeping an eye on. What are the data lovers, saying.
Look, I think we're all hanging out to see just how much this cost of living crisis, how it's playing out, and how people have responded and dealt with that. We don't really have the data in yet for the full impacts of the rise in rents, rise in the cost of just about everything. I think that's the thing that I'm most keen to unpeel how has that been played out in all the different families across Australia.
Thank you so much for your time. That was fascinating.
Nice to be with you.
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