NEW 5 years of personal wellbeing data from ONS

Since 2011, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has asked personal wellbeing questions to adults in the UK, to better understand how they feel about their lives.

Today they have released the fifth annual Personal Well-being dataset, as part of the Measuring National Well-being programme. Accompanying this is a report which presents headline results (local authority breakdowns will be published in early autumn 2016) for the year ending March 2016, together with how things have changed over the five years of collecting this information.

It finds that:

• reported personal well-being has improved across each of the measures over the 5 year period between the years ending March 2012 and 2016
• there has been no improvement in ratings of happiness, anxiety and feeling that things in life are worthwhile over the 1 year period between the years ending March 2015 and 2016
• those living in London reported lower average ratings of life satisfaction, anxiety and feeling things in life are worthwhile compared with UK overall
• people in Northern Ireland continue to give higher average ratings of personal well-being for all measures except anxiety, when compared with the other UK countries
• although women reported higher life satisfaction and worthwhile levels when compared with men, they also reported higher levels of anxiety

→Personal well-being in the UK: 2015 to 2016

→Have your say: ONS would value feedback on how this information is shared:

Usually, we release our annual dataset in September. However, this year, for the first time, we have brought this forward to July. We have also given our reference tables a new look, and the statistical bulletin is written in a new style that is more concise than previous years. We are really interested to know what you think of this.

→Please get in touch and give us your feedback at qualityoflife@ons.gov.uk