March 21, 2020
ANZ Roy Morgan Financial Wellbeing Indicator – Quarterly Update March 2020
Topic: Consumer Confidence, Press Release, Public Opinion, Special Poll
Finding No: 8341
FINANCIAL WELLBEING OVERVIEW
Indicator
- The ANZ Roy Morgan Financial Wellbeing Indicator shows the financial wellbeing of Australians improved by 1% year on year, from 59.6 (as a score out of 100) in December 2018 to 60.2 in December 2019 (Table 1).
- Financial wellbeing improved in the 12 months to December 2019 across most states and territories. However, financial wellbeing declined slightly in Queensland and the NT, and remained constant in NSW (Figure 5). The lack of growth in overall financial wellbeing in NSW can be attributed to a 3.1% fall in ‘resilience for the future’ during 2019.
Meeting everyday commitments
- The improvement in national financial wellbeing was despite no change in financial wellbeing in the December 2019 quarter, and was due primarily to an improvement in ‘meeting everyday commitments’, which increased by 3.2% during 2019.
Feeling comfortable
- The level of ‘feeling comfortable’ about one’s current and future financial situation also improved nationally from 55.3 in December 2018 to 55.9 in December 2019 (Table 1).
Resilience for the future
- ‘Resilience for the future’ – the ability to cope with financial setbacks – is strongly influenced by active saving habits. After steady growth in recent years, resilience declined nationally by 1.9%, from 53.7 in December 2018 to 52.7 in December 2019 (Table 1). This was due primarily to a decline in the number of month’s income in savings that Australians have on hand, weakened by slower deposit growth and subdued improvements in household incomes over the period.
- The decline in resilience also affected the population distribution across financial wellbeing segments, with the percentage of people ‘Struggling’ increasing by 1.5% during 2019 (Figure 3).
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Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
