7. Are the current personal well-being thresholds the best way to measure well-being inequality?

Background

As part of increasing interest in how well-being is distributed across the UK and groups within it, research was undertaken to investigate a range of possible measures of well-being inequalities. This work was commissioned by Office for National Statistics (ONS) and carried out by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in collaboration with the What Works Centre for Well-being. Understanding how different groups of people rate their personal well-being is important to identify who is thriving and who is struggling in different aspects of life.

The project involved interviews with a range of stakeholders as well as an online survey to understand more about what the goals of reducing well-being inequality might be. This informed our views of what it is important to measure. The project report, which explores the strengths and weaknesses of different measures of well-being inequality, has been published alongside this release.

The conclusion from this project is that “thresholds” seem to be the most appropriate way to present well-being inequalities. This means that people’s self-reported ratings of life satisfaction, worthwhile, happiness and anxiety may be said to represent “very high” or “very low” well-being depending on the score they attributed to each question. Although this is the method currently used by ONS, a recommendation was made to consider widening the threshold for lowest well-being. It was suggested that:

the current definition may exclude individuals who are struggling but giving slightly higher scores to the questions

increasing the threshold may allow further disaggregation of the data, especially at local level, to better explore issues affecting people in the current low threshold (0 to 4)

The current thresholds used in the personal well-being publications are detailed in Table 1. The thresholds were initially established in 2011 when the first well-being data were collected by ONS. They were developed with expert academic advice and agreed by the National Statistician’s Measuring National Well-being Advisory Forum.

Table 1: Labelling of thresholds, UK Life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness scores Anxiety scores Response on an 11 point scale Label Response on an 11 point scale Label 0 to 4 Low 0 to 1 Very low 5 to 6 Medium 2 to 3 Low 7 to 8 High 4 to 5 Medium 9 to 10 Very high 6 to 10 High Source: Office for National Statistics Download this table Table 1: Labelling of thresholds, UK .xls (32.8 kB)

Figure 4 shows the distribution of responses for each measure of personal well-being in the year ending December 2017. The distributions of the life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness scores are skewed to the right (the positive end of the scale) and for anxiety the distribution is skewed to the left (also the positive end of the scale). Additionally, Figure 4 shows that more people rate their life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness as 5 (the mid-point of the response scale) than 4 or below. For anxiety, more people gave ratings up to 5 while fewer gave ratings of 6 or more.

Figure 4: Distributions showing the number of people responding to each point on the scale, year ending December 2017 UK Source: Annual Population Survey, Office for National Statistics Download this image Figure 4: Distributions showing the number of people responding to each point on the scale, year ending December 2017 .png (27.7 kB) .xlsx (11.6 kB)

The purpose of testing different thresholds was to explore:

whether wider thresholds show similar patterns in the data over time

how much the sample size in the low threshold increases when it is widened

whether increasing the size of the low threshold would allow for more robust analysis of this group

whether the demographics of the respondents reporting 0 to 4 differ from those reporting 5 or 6 on the scale

Details of the thresholds tested are shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Testing of thresholds, UK Well-being measure Current Threshold First threshold tested Second threshold tested Label Life Satisfaction 0 to 4 0 to 5 0 to 6 Low Worthwhile 0 to 4 0 to 5 0 to 6 Low Happiness 0 to 4 0 to 5 0 to 6 Low Anxiety 6 to 10 5 to 10 4 to 10 High Source: Office for National Statistics Download this table Table 2: Testing of thresholds, UK .xls (35.8 kB)

Main findings from the threshold testing

The initial analysis considered change over time (year ending December 2012 to year ending December 2017). Increasing the threshold from 0 to 4 to 0 to 5 showed a similar pattern over time; however, increasing the threshold to 0 to 6 tended to present different results. This suggested that those reporting a score of 6 for life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness are potentially a different group to those reporting 5 and below.

An increase in the sample size of the low well-being group could potentially allow us to carry out more robust analysis of this group, including comparisons between data points over time. To test this, the data were run on the current and proposed new thresholds: although the standard errors of the estimates increased, the relative standard errors, or coefficient of variations, decreased. The improved precision of the estimates would represent one advantage of widening the lowest threshold.

To further test the change in thresholds, it was investigated whether the same population demographics were captured by the different thresholds. The article What matters most to Personal Well-being? reported that the three most influential factors on our well-being are employment status, self-reported health and relationship status. Research has consistently shown that unemployment, poor health and being divorced or separated are all linked to poorer well-being. To investigate whether people who score 0 to 4, 5 and 6 had similar characteristics, these factors that are known to be important to personal well-being were considered.

The distributions of these three factors, as shown in Tables 3a and 3b, indicate that people who gave ratings of 0 to 4 had different characteristics than those who responded either 5 or 6. Those rating life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness as 4 or below were more likely to have the characteristics and circumstances expected to be associated with poorer well-being than those rating their well-being as 5 or 6.

Table 3a shows the differences found in employment status. For example, those who were employed were 10 percentage points more likely to report 5 for their life satisfaction compared with 0 to 4 and 23 percentage points more likely to report 6 than 0 to 4. Similar differences also appeared when considering respondents self-reported health (as shown in Table 3b) and their relationship status.

Table 3a: Percentage of respondents rating their life satisfaction as 0 to 4, 5 and 6, UK Well-being Measure Employment status Life Satisfaction In employment ILO unemployed Inactive 0 to 4 36.3% 7.3% 56.4% 5 46.7% 5.8% 47.5% 6 58.9% 5.4% 35.7% Source: Office for National Statistics Download this table Table 3a: Percentage of respondents rating their life satisfaction as 0 to 4, 5 and 6, UK .xls (35.8 kB)

Table 3b: Percentage of respondents rating their life satisfaction as 0 to 4, 5 and 6 , UK Well-being Measure Self-reported health Life Satisfaction Very Good Good Fair Bad Very Bad 0 to 4 10.6% 22.1% 27.3% 26.0% 14.0% 5 16.1% 32.6% 31.2% 15.9% 4.2% 6 22.3% 39.7% 27.5% 8.6% 2.0% Source: Office for National Statistics Download this table Table 3b: Percentage of respondents rating their life satisfaction as 0 to 4, 5 and 6 , UK .xls (36.4 kB)

These patterns are similar for life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness. However, when considering anxiety there are not as many differences between those reporting 6 to 10 and 5; differences only start to emerge when increasing the threshold to 4 to 10.

Conclusions

Following this testing, it was concluded that the thresholds should be kept as they currently are until further work takes place, as there seem to be differences in the characteristics and circumstances of those reporting 0 to 4 for their personal well-being and those reporting 5 or 6.

Our initial analysis suggests that people rating life satisfaction, worthwhile and happiness as 4 or below on the scale are much more likely to have the characteristics and circumstances associated with poor well-being than those rating these aspects of well-being even one point higher (5 or above), who are rating their own well-being more positively.

While the definition of lowest well-being should not be overly narrow, it needs to be narrow enough to offer clear insights into the lives of those with the poorest well-being. This will enable clearer decision-making about what can be done to support them.

The research (see Measuring Well-being Inequality: working paper on the selection of a headline indicator for more information) clearly showed that stakeholders and those responding to the online survey were most interested in taking a progressive universalism approach to well-being. This means helping to ensure positive well-being for everyone, but prioritising the needs of those with the poorest well-being. This is another reason to clearly identify who has the poorest well-being and what characteristics and circumstances are associated with this.

Next steps

This year, ONS will be establishing a Centre of Expertise for Inequalities. The aim of this centre will be to ensure that the right data are available to address the main social and policy questions about fairness and equity in our society, that the relevant analysis is taken forward and that the most appropriate methods are used. This will involve partnerships across government, academia and other organisations to identify where better evidence is needed and to make better use of new and existing data sources.

As part of this, work is currently ongoing focussing on the lowest levels of personal well-being to help uncover the characteristics and circumstances of individuals or groups who report poor well-being. This project aims to help inform policy decisions and improve the well-being of the worst off in society. We will also explore whether those in the current “medium (5 to 6)” threshold might be “at risk” of poor well-being, for example, by monitoring the size of this group and possible transitions in and out of poor well-being.

If you have any comments or questions regarding this work, please contact us at: QualityOfLife@ons.gov.uk.