Who Has the Poorest Personal Well-Being?’

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 from 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.

Image: Retired home owners with health issues are in the lowest catagory. 

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