Media Clipping — Thursday June.26th, 2008, The Chronicle Herald

Love or money?
Family, friends and faith mean more to Nova Scotians than money and materialism, suggests a GPI Atlantic study released Tuesday.

By IAN FAIRCLOUGH

The non-profit research group surveyed 3,600 people in Glace Bay and Kings County. The survey was long, taking about 2½ hours to complete, but that meant many questions on key aspects of well-being could be asked, said GPI executive director Ronald Colman.

He told attendees at the International Association for Community Development conference in Wolfville that respondents in the two areas of Nova Scotia were equally happy and satisfied with life, despite the collapse of industry in Glace Bay, the much higher unemployment rate and the lower average income than in Kings County.

And there is a relationship between people’s income and happiness and their health, Mr. Colman said.

"As the income gets higher, people are more likely to say the health is excellent or very good."

Questions about what values are important are rarely asked in regular surveys, he said. Respondents were asked to rank 10 values in order of importance.

Lead researcher Michael Pennock said in a release that Nova Scotians "seem to view themselves as socially caring people living in a materialistic and career-oriented society. In fact, the numbers show that the dominant materialism and commercial culture of our times may be out of touch with what matters to people and with their deepest core values."

On material issues, Kings County and Glace Bay residents were nearly three times as likely to give high importance to financial security as to material wealth, he said, so "policies that enhance job security, ensure a living wage and provide financial support in times of crisis or difficulty may correspond far more closely to Nova Scotians’ needs and values than policies and inducements designed to encourage more consumption and production."

At the conference, Mr. Colman said the study’s results have policy implications. He said that when smoking rates were found to be high in Glace Bay, officials immediately went to the elementary school, saying that something had to be done to persuade young people not to start smoking.

The results are part of GPI Atlantic’s long-term effort to develop indicators of genuine progress and well-being at the community level.

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