Shopping is no therapy for stressed Australians
Australians are caught in a spiralling frenzy of consumerism as they work longer and longer hours in a bid to buy more and more luxury goods, according to research presented to an international conference.
While sales of flashy mobile phones, flat-screen televisions, DVD players and sports utility vehicles are soaring, they are delivering little emotional satisfaction in return, the research showed.
Despite having more material possessions than previous generations could have dreamed of, 62 per cent of Australians feel they do not have enough money to buy all the things they need. The figure included half of the country's richest households.
'Material wealth is rising each year, but people are not reporting higher levels of well-being,' said Richard Denniss, a keynote speaker at the two-day Globalisation, Families and Work conference in Brisbane.
'In fact they are reporting greater levels of stress and dissatisfaction. We as a society have to ask ourselves what we want to achieve: a new flat-screen TV or spending more time with our families.'
In the last decade, the proportion of Australians working more than 45 hours a week has increased from 24 per cent to 30 per cent.
'If you are working really long hours, you buy takeaway food in the evenings and pay someone to do your washing and ironing. That in turn means that you have to work harder to earn more money. It's a vicious circle,' said Mr Denniss, a senior researcher at Canberra-based think-tank the Australia Institute.
Long working hours are also taking their toll on marriages and families. The conference heard of 10-year-old children hiding their parents' mobile phones in the evening to avoid work calls intruding on their time together.
Mobile phones, text messages and the internet are blamed for blurring the boundaries between work and home, further adding to the pressure. 'Working hours are becoming so long that people just go to the office, come home and sleep,' Mr Denniss said. 'They try to justify the amount of time they spend working by buying new things, but retail therapy doesn't solve the problem.'
