1. Framework and review overview
The Measuring National Well-being programme was launched by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in November 2010 to provide a comprehensive picture of how we are doing as individuals, as communities and as a nation, and how sustainable this is for the future.
The programme included a national debate where we asked the public: "What matters to you?". This generated over 34,000 responses which were used to develop the national well-being framework that the ONS has been reporting on ever since. For more details on the national debate, see our National Statistician's reflections on measuring what matters (PDF 1.1MB).
For more information on the background of the national well-being framework, see our Findings from the National Well-being Debate release (PDF 408KB) published in July 2011, and our well-being publications archive. For more information on the associated children and young people's well-being frameworks, see our Children's views on well-being and what makes a happy life, UK: 2020 article. You can also explore our Children's well-being measures dataset and our Young people's well-being measures dataset.
Review background
It has been over 10 years since the development of the Measures of National Well-being framework. In 2022 to 2023, we undertook a review into the measures we report on and the ways in which we communicate them to ensure they continue to reflect what is important to well-being in the UK and provide users with information in a useful way.
Summary of review activities
As part of the review, we carried out a number of stakeholder engagements and research activities.
We conducted a user and stakeholder feedback survey asking respondents what matters most to national well-being and their views on our current measures and dissemination tools. We also asked adults in Great Britain about what mattered most to their individual well-being and to the well-being of their communities through the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey. For more detail, see our Individual and community well-being, Great Britain: October 2022 bulletin.
We reviewed recommended literature, as well as domestic and international well-being dashboards.
We also reviewed existing well-being insights from socio-demographic groups that were more likely to report low personal well-being. We commissioned qualitative research into groups where well-being evidence was limited to ensure we represent what matters to a diverse range of people in the UK. Specifically, we looked at people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other minority sexual orientations and gender identities (LGBT+), and Black, Black British, Black Caribbean and Black African, and Arab ethnic groups.
We chose these groups based on ONS research into the personal well-being of various demographic sub-groups in the UK, detailed in our Annual Population Survey regression models dataset and GOV.UK's Ethnicity facts and figures website. This work also complemented research being carried out by the ONS Centre for Equalities and Inclusion.
The review was supported by a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of topic experts, both belonging to and external to government, who provided ongoing feedback and advice.
More information on our stakeholder engagement and research activities can be found in our Review of the UK Measures of National Well-being, October 2022 to March 2023.
Review outcomes
The revised measures of national well-being, now called the UK Measures of National Well-being (UK MNW), contain 60 measures (an increase from 44). We added 22 new measures and removed 6 since the previous iteration, and some changes were made to the retained measures. For example, we updated the data sources for some measures to improve timeliness, consistency and geographic coverage.
We decided to continue publishing the national well-being statistics on a quarterly basis. The latest available data for our measures will be provided in our revised UK Measures of National Well-being Dashboard and the associated datasets.
Based on user feedback, we decided to discontinue the Quality of life in the UK statistical bulletin.
We will be publishing estimates of the UK MNW by additional breakdowns. Each quarter we will publish breakdowns by age, sex, UK country and English region, where these are available. Annually we will publish further socio-demographic breakdowns, including by disability. This work will start in autumn 2023, when we extend our Personal well-being in the UK bulletin to include personal characteristics, and will continue into autumn 2024, when we will provide these breakdowns by the additional UK MNW where possible.
More information on the review can be found in our Review of the UK Measures of National Well-being, October 2022 to March 2023.
Back to table of contents2. Framework structure and themes
Topic areas
The UK Measures of National Well-being (UK MNW) framework is comprised of 10 topic areas. Please note that we use the terms "domain" and "topic area" interchangeably in our publications. The topic areas provide a structure to measure national well-being. They reflect what is important to national well-being in a comprehensive and mutually exclusive way. We outline the topic areas and their definitions as follows.
Personal well-being
Personal well-being is the most direct representation of how people are doing. Measures in this topic area cover people's opinions on aspects of their current well-being.
Our relationships
People's relationships can affect their well-being outcomes, including quality of life and happiness. Measures in this topic area cover the presence and quality of relationships people may have with family, friends, and the community around them.
Health
Physical and mental health are important parts of people's personal well-being. Measures in this topic area cover both objective and subjective measures of health. They also cover satisfaction with the healthcare system to capture how the nation's health is supported.
What we do
Participation in, satisfaction with, and balance between work and leisure activities represent people's lifestyle choices. Measures in this topic area cover subjective and objective measures related to work, leisure and volunteering.
Where we live
Where people live, the quality of their local area and their community, and how they feel about it can affect personal well-being. Measures in this topic area cover housing, the local environment, access to facilities, and being part of a cohesive community.
Personal finance
How households and individuals are managing financially influences many aspects of their lives. Measures in this topic area cover household income and wealth, poverty and financial inequalities, and people's opinions about their own financial situations.
Education and skills
Education and skills can determine individuals' socioeconomic outcomes. Measures in this topic area cover human capital, as well as qualifications and skills. They also cover satisfaction with the education system to capture how people's education is supported.
Economy
The economy affects the financial welfare of individuals, communities and the UK as a whole. Measures in this topic area cover economic activity in the UK. They also cover consumer confidence to capture people's perceptions of the country's economic situation.
Governance
Good governance contributes to better social and economic outcomes. Measures in this topic area cover public trust and civic participation. They also cover satisfaction with the police and justice system to capture how public administration is supported.
Environment
The natural environment is relevant to people's quality of life because it makes human life and activity possible. Measures in this topic area cover aspects of climate change, the UK's natural environment and natural capital, and the effects of human activity on the environment.
Measures
Each topic area is represented by several measures. There are 60 measures in total. Full definitions and more information on the measures and their sources can be found in the UK Measures of National Well-being: measures metadata. We outline the measures, grouped by topic area, as follows.
Personal well-being
Life satisfaction: people reporting low satisfaction with their lives
Feeling things done in life are worthwhile: people reporting low levels of feeling the things they do in life are worthwhile
Happiness: people reporting low happiness yesterday
Feeling anxious: people reporting feeling high anxiety yesterday
Hope for the future: people who tend to feel hopeful about their future
Fair treatment: people who feel they are very or somewhat unfairly treated by society
Our relationships
Unhappy partner relationships: people in fairly or extremely unhappy relationships
Satisfaction with social relationships: people who are fairly or very satisfied with their social relationships
People to rely on: people who agree or strongly agree that they can rely on people in their lives if they have a serious problem
Loneliness: people who feel lonely often or always
Local community integration: people who agree or strongly agree that people from different backgrounds get on well together in their local area
Trust in others: people who in general trust most other people
Health
Healthy life expectancy: healthy life expectancy at birth by sex
Satisfaction with health: people who are fairly or very satisfied with their health
Physical health conditions: people reporting having cancer, cardiovascular conditions, dementia, diabetes, kidney and liver disease, chronic musculoskeletal or respiratory conditions
Depression or anxiety: people reporting some evidence of depression or anxiety
Satisfaction with healthcare system: people who tend to be satisfied with the healthcare system in the UK
What we do
Satisfaction with time use: people who are fairly or very satisfied with how they spend their time in a typical week
Satisfaction with main job: people who are fairly or very satisfied with their main job
Time spent on unpaid work: average daily time spent on unpaid work by sex
Volunteering: people who gave unpaid help to clubs, groups, charities or organisations in the last 12 months
Engagement with arts and culture: people who took part in creative or artistic activities, or attended cultural or artistic events in the last 12 months
Sports participation: people who on average take part in "moderate plus intensity" sport and/or physical activity for at least 150 minutes a week
Visits to nature: people who visited green and natural spaces in their free time in the last 14 days
Where we live
Satisfaction with accommodation: people who are fairly or very satisfied with their accommodation
Satisfaction with local area: people who are fairly or very satisfied with their local area as a place to live
Belonging to neighbourhood: people who agree or strongly agree that they feel like they belong to their neighbourhood
Local connectivity: measure of ability to travel to places of value (where 100 denotes the most connected Output Area in 2022); this is a new measure that is under development, and we aim to implement it when the required data are released
Digital exclusion: People who do not have access to the internet at home
Crime: incidence of personal crime
Feeling safe: people who felt fairly or very safe walking alone in their local area after dark by sex
Personal finance
Median household income: median equivalised household disposable income (in real terms)
Median household wealth: median household total wealth (including private pension wealth, in real terms)
Relative low-income households: people with household income below 60% of contemporary household median income (after housing costs)
Household income inequality: Gini coefficient for measure of income inequality (where 0 means complete equality of household disposable income)
Gender pay gap: gross hourly median difference in pay between women and men (for full-time employees, excluding overtime)
Difficulty managing financially: people who have found it fairly or very difficult to get by financially in the past month
Education and skills
NEET: young people not in education, employment or training (seasonally adjusted)
No qualifications: people aged 16 to 64 years with no qualifications
A-level or equivalent qualifications: people aged 16 to 64 years with A-level equivalent qualifications or higher
Human capital: total value of people's projected lifetime earnings (in real terms)
Satisfaction with own education and skills: people who are fairly or very satisfied with their education and skills
Satisfaction with education system: people who tend to be satisfied with the education system in the UK
Economy
Unemployment rate: unemployment rate among adults aged 16 years and over (seasonally adjusted)
Inflation rate: annual inflation rate (as measured by Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH))
Public sector net debt: public sector net debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (non-seasonally adjusted)
Consumer confidence: consumers' views of their finances and the economy in the previous and next 12 months
Governance
Voter turnout: voter turnout in UK general elections
Trust in UK government: people who tend to trust the UK government
Voice in government matters: people who agree or strongly agree that they do not have any say in what the government does
Satisfaction with police: people who tend to be satisfied with the police in the UK
Satisfaction with courts and legal system: people who tend to be satisfied with the courts and legal system in the UK
Environment
Greenhouse gas emissions: total greenhouse gas emissions
Renewable energy use: renewable energy as a percentage of gross final energy consumption
Household recycling: recycling rate for waste from households
Protected areas: extent of protected areas at land and sea
Priority species: relative abundance of priority species
Air pollution: average number of days when air pollution is moderate or higher
Surface water status: percentage of UK surface water bodies awarded "Good" or "High" water quality status
Pro-environmental lifestyle: people who have made some or a lot of changes to their lifestyle to help tackle environmental issues
Themes and aspects of well-being covered in the framework
Measures of individual, community and national well-being
The framework was designed to measure how we are doing as individuals, as communities and as a nation, and how sustainable it is for the future. As part of our recent review into the measures used in the framework, we took care to ensure that we maintained a balance of measures that represent the well-being of individuals, communities and the nation. For more details, see our Review of the UK Measures of National Well-being, October 2022 to March 2023.
Subjective and objective measures of well-being
The framework includes both subjective and objective measures of well-being. Subjective measures are based on directly asking people about their feelings, opinions and sentiments. Objective measures focus on reporting facts about people's lives and the spaces in which they live.
Some measures may also be based on a mixture of subjective and objective elements. For example, the "Healthy life expectancy" category uses self-reported health measures along with calculations from mortality statistics.
Sustainability of well-being
While the UK Measures of National Well-being covers and tracks the current well-being of people in the UK, it is also crucial to consider the sustainability of well-being. In the framework, sustainability is captured in part by using the four capitals: human capital, social capital, economic capital and natural capital. The four capitals constitute the stock of resources which underpin people's welfare and are used to evaluate the future sustainability of well-being.
We have captured human, social, economic, and natural capital through various measures in the framework. More information about which measure captures which theme and aspect of well-being can be found in the UK Measures of National Well-being: measures metadata.
Back to table of contents3. Quality characteristics of the framework
This section of the user guide provides information on the quality of the framework and identifies issues that should be noted when using the output.
We have developed guidelines for measuring statistical quality based on the European Statistical System's five dimensions of quality.
Relevance
The UK Measures of National Well-being (UK MNW) were originally established following a national debate on what matters to people. These measures were revised in 2022 to 2023 to the current set of 60 measures following a six-month public review. More information about the review can be found in our Review of the UK Measures of National Well-being, October 2022 to March 2023 and our UK Measures of National Well-being, current and upcoming work: July 2023 article.
In the future, we will take an iterative approach to updating the framework. For example, if a new data source with wider geographic coverage becomes available for a measure, we will evaluate it and, if appropriate, swap the measure in the framework.
Timeliness and punctuality
The UK MNW are published on a quarterly basis.
More information on the update frequency for each measure can be found in the associated UK Measures of National Well-being: measures metadata.
Accuracy and reliability
Where available, confidence intervals are provided within the datasets alongside this release. Where changes over time are presented, associated confidence intervals are used to assess the statistical significance of the differences.
This is a conservative method of assessing change, so it is possible that significant differences exist in the data that have not been identified using this method. Our guidance on Uncertainty and how we measure it for our surveys contains more information on how we measure and communicate uncertainty for survey data.
For some of the measures that are not based on survey data, confidence intervals are not available. In those cases, change over time has not been assessed, or has been assessed based on guidance from the data owner. When interpreting the latest estimates and the presented assessments of change, we advise users to keep in mind the potential impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on individuals' attitudes and survey responses, as well as the impact of the pandemic on data collection, given the major disruption that the pandemic caused to people's lives and to survey data collection.
Because most of the data come from self-completion household surveys, the estimates may not be representative of individuals who do not live in private residential households.
Most of the measures used in the framework are official statistics while some are Accredited Official Statistics. Accredited Official Statistics are accredited and scrutinised by the UK Statistics Authority to ensure they meet quality criteria in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
Coherence and comparability
Feedback received as part of the review of the UK MNW highlighted the importance of coherence.
We have approached coherence in the framework in a number of ways, including domestic and international comparability of metrics, geographic coverage and comparability between the measures themselves.
Geographically, we aim to include the widest possible coverage of the UK to allow for greatest comparability. For measures that do not cover the entire UK, we have aimed to provide links to the relevant alternative devolved administration data to support coherence across the UK.
We have also aimed for consistency in question structure and response scales across measures.
More information on the geographic coverage, questions, and devolved administration sources for each measure can be found in the associated UK Measures of National Well-being: measures metadata.
Accessibility and clarity
The UK Measures of National Well-being: measures metadata are available online and can be downloaded in xls file types. Graphs, summary findings and links to source data are available in the UK Measures of National Well-being dashboard.
We welcome feedback and enquiries regarding the framework, which can be mailed to qualityoflife@ons.gov.uk or telephone +44 3000 67 1543. It may be possible to meet additional data requests, but these may be chargeable depending on the time required to produce the additional data requested.
The UK Measures of National Well-being: measures metadata contains information on the question, data source, frequency of update, devolved administration source, and method of assessment of change for each measure. User requested data are also published on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) website.
For information regarding conditions of access to data, please refer to the following:
Terms and conditions (for data on the website)
Back to table of contents4. About the release
How we collect the data
Data are collated in two ways, including:
re-publishing existing data, where data are already available
undertaking new analysis where data are not published, but micro-datasets are available; where access to datasets is not available, we contact the data owners and request them to run the analysis for us
Data sources
New analysis is carried out using the following Office for National Statistics (ONS) surveys or publicly available datasets:
Annual Population Survey (APS) from the ONS
British Election Study from the University of Oxford and University of Manchester
Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) from the ONS
People and Nature Survey from Natural England (publicly available on the UK Data Service website)
Understanding Society: The UK Longitudinal Study (publicly available on the UK Data Service website)
Measures based on published data are sourced from the following surveys:
Active Lives Adult Survey from Sport England
Air Quality Statistics from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) from the ONS
Biodiversity Indicators from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Consumer Confidence Barometer from Growth from Knowledge (GfK)
Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) from the ONS
Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES) from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
Health Index for England (Physical health conditions sub-domain) from the ONS
Healthy state life expectancies from the ONS
Household Finances Survey (HFS) from the Department for Work and Pensions
Households Below Average Income (HBAI) Statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions
Human capital estimates from the Office for National Statistics
Inflation estimates from the Office for National Statistics
Labour Force Survey (LFS) from the ONS
Online Time Use Survey (OTUS) from the ONS
Participation Survey from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
Public Sector Finance from the Office for National Statistics
Technology Tracker from the Office of Communications (Ofcom)
UK statistics on waste from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
UK Territorial Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Voter Turnout from the House of Commons Library
Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) from the ONS
For links to all sources, see our UK Measures of National Well-being: measures metadata.
How the data are processed
Where we carry out analysis on person-level datasets, associated quality and methodology information reports detail how data are collected and processed before we access it for analysis. The following reports provide more information:
For APS: see Section 6 of our Annual Population Survey (APS) QMI.
For OPN: see Section 6 of our Opinions and Lifestyle Survey QMI.
For Understanding Society: a technical report is published for each wave, and a main user guide provides information on how the data are processed.
Where data are already published and based on survey data, user guides or technical reports are available at source.
How we analyse and interpret the data
We publish the time series for each measure and its change over time where available. Changes in estimates are displayed over the short and long term. Short-term change is assessed as the latest estimate compared with one year prior. Long-term change is assessed as the latest estimate compared with five years prior.
However, for measures sourced from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, short-term change is based on the time point closest to the previous year. This may vary between 10 and 14 months because of the rotation of questions on the survey. Additionally, for environmental measures ("Protected areas", "Priority species", "Air pollution" and "Surface water status"), short-term change is assessed as the latest estimate compared with five years prior, and long-term change is assessed as the latest period compared to the first period. This is to reflect the relatively slow movement of change in these measures and based on guidance from the data owners.
We report confidence intervals and sample sizes, where available, to aid data interpretation. Where confidence intervals are available, we use these to assess the statistical significance of the change over time. For more information on confidence intervals and statistical significance, see our guidance on Uncertainty and how we measure it for our surveys.
Where confidence intervals are not available, change over time is assessed based on guidance from the data owner or not assessed at all.
We assess change for each measure by evaluating whether it has had a positive change, negative change or stayed the same. We make this assessment based on the sentiment of the measure. For example, for the "Feeling anxious" measure, we would report a positive change for "People reporting feeling high anxiety yesterday" if the percentage of people reporting feeling high anxiety had decreased.
How we quality assure and validate the data
For new analysis and published data, data are dual-run by independent analysts and checked for accuracy at multiple stages between analysis and final output (presented on the well-being dashboard and data tables).
Where necessary, estimates are suppressed to avoid any disclosure of personal information.
We engage and collaborate with data owners whose data we publish to review our outputs and ensure we are reporting their data in a clear and accurate way.
We conduct triangulation of findings by comparing our data with other existing data, where possible.
How we disseminate the data
The UK Measures of National Well-being (UK MNW) are updated on a quarterly basis when new data become available. The headline data are published on the UK MNW dashboard. The dashboard presents each measure within its domain and includes:
A chart to illustrate the latest findings or graph to show time series data.
Commentary on the data.
Headline findings.
Filters to view data in a certain way, such as by domain or direction of change.
Our associated datasets that contain further detail are published alongside the dashboard, including current and historical data, sub-population breakdowns by country, region, age and sex for the latest data (where available), accompanying quality information (where available), relevant notes to guide correct interpretation of the data, and links back to the source information.
Back to table of contents