About this Report
The Roy Morgan State of the Nation Report provides a ten-year perspective on Australian Society based on over half a million interviews conducted between July 1997 and March 2009. This is the fourth in the series.
The first part of the report STEPE covers trends in the following areas:
- SOCIETY: Ageing Population; Rising Education Level; Household Size Decreasing; Real Growth in Employment; Australians Becoming More Progressive; Food and Health; Changing Leisure Activities.
- TECHNOLOGY: Mobile and Internet, particularly broadband increase; MP3 Players, DVD Recorders, 3G phone consideration and VoIP use / intention increasing; Media Consumption over time; Technology and Banking; Shopping on the Internet.
- ECONOMY: Unemployment; Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence; Housing Interest Rates; Term deposit rates; Petrol Prices; Exchange Rates; Share Market; Total Superannuation Assets.
- POLITICS: Voting Intentions.
- ENVIRONMENT: Environment as an Issue has come of age; But taking action is the next step...; Public Transport. Each report, as well as updating trends, will throw a ’spotlight’ on a particular issue.
Our focus for this report is Wealth Effect and Investor Stress. This Report shows:
- Strong investment returns (and household wealth) dramatically reversed with the GFC;
- The poor investment returns have not yet had any dramatic measurable impact on discretionary retail sales, except amongst particularly vulnerable groups, such as self-funded retirees.
A meaningful analysis by wealth quintiles (excluding owner occupied home), lifestage and employment segmentation has been used - as a framework by which to understand the wealth effect and discretionary retail spending. This report also includes a detailed media usage analysis on the top wealth quintile and provides insightful information on the wealthiest group.