Wellbeing in the UK is flatlining according to new research published by Carnegie UK. What’s more, Life in the UK 2025 shows the UK remains deeply divided – “the gap between those with higher incomes and secure housing and those without remains wide, shaping everything from reported quality of health to safety in the local community”. Roger Higman reports.
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Carnegie UK’s Life in the UK Index aims to measure ‘collective wellbeing’ across the UK – based on answers given to 26 questions by over 7000 people from all parts of the UK. It “aims to help governments across the UK focus their attention on the things that really matter to people, and to help us understand whether we are collectively living better or worse”.
Questions asked cover four different ‘domains’ of wellbeing – social, economic, environmental and democratic and focus on topics such as how safe people feel walking alone in their local neighbourhood after dark, how much they trust their local council and whether they can afford to go on a week’s holiday each year.
The answers received are compiled into an index which gives an overall score of ‘collective wellbeing’ for the year. Individual indices are also prepared for each domain and for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland individually.
The 2025 survey is the third of a series being undertaken each year until at least 2030.
Overall, it suggests ‘collective wellbeing’ in the UK has flatlined. The 2025 score is not significantly different to what it was in the previous two years. As in previous years, higher scores to questions in the social and economic domains are undermined by a lack of trust in institutions such as the central and local government, the police, media and the judiciary.
Furthermore, responses to many individual questions have varied since the survey was first carried out. In 2025, more people are saying that they can afford to heat their homes and socialise with friends at least once a month – suggesting that the ‘cost of living’ crises is easing, albeit only slightly.
What really stands out, though, is the differences in the answers given by different people. Carnegie, working with their partner Ipsos, have looked at how ‘collective wellbeing’ scores vary depending on the respondents’ wealth, gender, age, ethnicity, disability and so on.
The variations are stark – in some cases as large as 12 points out of 100. People living in households with an annual income of more than £100,000 report far better wellbeing than those living in households with an annual income of less than £26,000. People living in better off areas report far higher wellbeing, especially in the environmental domain, than those who live in areas with high levels of deprivation. People with disabilities report lower wellbeing than those without.
Also, people from ethnic minorities (including white minorities) report lower wellbeing than the White British; young people report lower wellbeing than those aged over 55; people living in social housing report lower wellbeing than those who rent privately and even lower than homeowners.
The United Kingdom remains a profoundly unfair place – where individual wellbeing is strongly associated with wealth.
This, in turn, raises, yet again, questions about the emphasis given by politicians to economic growth. Will more growth overall lead to better wellbeing or do we need to focus more on who benefits from that growth and how?
You can download the report here or hear from Carnegie themselves here.