People, population and community
New analysis
from the Office for National Statistics published today shows that there are
over half a million people in the UK experiencing the poorest levels of
personal well-being. This means they have poor ratings across all four personal
well-being measures: life satisfaction, feeling that the things they do in life
are worthwhile, happiness and anxiety.
The most
significant factor associated with poorest personal well-being is having ‘bad’
or ‘very bad’ health – those people are almost 14 times more likely to report
the poorest personal well-being than those with ‘very good’ or ‘good’ health.
ONS also found that disabled people were almost twice as likely as non-disabled
people to report poor personal well-being across all the measures.
The ONS has
identified other individual factors that are associated with the lowest levels
of personal well-being, besides health. These include: being economically
inactive with long-term illness or disability; being middle-aged, being single/
separated/ widowed or divorced; renting their home; having no, or basic,
education.
“There are
inequalities in our society beyond the purely economic ones,” says Silvia Manclossi, Head of Quality of Life Team at the Office for National Statistics. “Today, for the first time, we have
identified some of the factors common to the half a million people in the UK
with the lowest level of personal well-being. Improving how people feel about
their lives is important for the health of our society in so many ways – not
least the social and economic implications. Today’s findings will help target
services to support those in most need.”
Three groups of
people were identified as being at particular risk of having the poorest
personal well-being:
Unemployed/
economically inactive renters with self-reported health problems/ disability;
Employed renters with
self-reported health problems/ disability;
Retired home owners
with self-reported health problems/ disability.
(Please
note: the findings are for the UK only, and are not broken down further by
country or region)
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