Author:
Jenny Peachey and Jennifer Wallace, Carnegie UK
Year: 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7384384-0-2

The Life in the UK index is a three-year demonstrator project designed to measure the collective wellbeing of the people of the UK, looking at social, economic, environmental, and democratic aspects of life.  This landmark research, conducted in partnership with Ipsos, is based on a survey of more than 6900 people.

This insights paper presents further detail on the inequalities we identified in collective, social, economic, environmental and democratic wellbeing by annual household income in the UK. It reveals that those with lower household incomes are more likely to be worse off across a range of areas.

For example, people with the lowest annual household income are:

  • Five times more likely than those in households earning £52,000-£99,999 to report that they can’t afford enough food for everyone in their household.
  • Almost four times more likely than those in the top two household income brackets (£52,000-£99,999 and £100,000 and above) to report that they can’t keep their homes adequately warm.
  • Around twice as likely to report poor health and mental health than any other income group.
  • Significantly more likely than any other income group to experience discrimination, to report feeling unsafe walking alone at night, and to report low levels of trust in local councils, the legal system and courts and trust in the police.

Other reports in this series include:

Jurisdictional reports Demographic reports Methodological reports Carnegie UK has and will continue to follow the principles of the Code of Practice for Statistics in the production of our Life in the UK index. We outline how we will adhere to these principles in our Voluntary Statement of Compliance. You can access the full data tables associated with this research here.  

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