and this also helps to address smaller sample sizes for those who did not complete Year 12 and for
those with postgraduate degrees, meaning there should be little loss of information.
The patterns are generally similar for each qualification level, but there are some notable exceptions.
Comparing university-qualified persons with those who did not complete Year 12, the results suggest
that the university graduates’ subjective wellbeing is shaped more strongly by their happiness with
their careers and how the economy is run. Persons who did not complete school seem to place
greater importance on happiness with their life at home and their standard of living. It is interesting
to note that how the country is run had by far the stronger association with happiness for university
graduates, and this is one of the factors with which people express the lowest levels of happiness.
The variation with eventual education level also holds for the early years of the survey—happiness
with how the country was run seems to have no bearing on the happiness of those who were to leave
school early. Here, as elsewhere, the results for those with intermediate levels of qualifications make
it clear that associations do not change monotonically with educational attainment.