Nearly 7 million UK people – around 13% of the population aged 16 and above – are estimated to be living below the Happiness Poverty Line.

The World Wellbeing Movement defines the Happiness Poverty Line as those who rate their satisfaction with life at 5 or below on the 0-10 scale reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Using the latest annual life satisfaction data made available by the ONS, the 2025 UK Wellbeing Report estimates that an additional 650,000 UK adults – enough to fill Wembley Stadium more than seven times – have fallen below the Happiness Poverty Line compared to the previous 12 months.

Of the home nations, Wales has the highest proportion of residents living below the Happiness Poverty Line (15%) and Northern Ireland has the lowest (12%).

Worryingly, the gradual improvements in average UK wellbeing levels observed before the Covid-19 pandemic have been erased. Prior to 2020, the proportion of people living below the Happiness Poverty Line was falling year on year. Despite an initial recovery in 2022, that trend has since reversed.

And the latest quarterly figures released by the ONS in May confirm that this stagnation extends into at least the last quarter of 2024.

Trends in Happiness Poverty Across the United Kingdom

Source: Annual Population Survey (April 2012- March 2023) https://doi.org/10.57906/0qp1-6k77

Notes: Sample restricted to respondents of age 16 years and older. All numbers in this figure are aggregated across all respondents in each wave. The sample sizes that these trends are based on are presented in Table 2A. There are no instances in which the averages in this figure are calculated on fewer than 10 observations.

The World Wellbeing Movement is working alongside a cross-party group of Parliamentarians and other policy experts to better understand and address the conditions required to build better lives, and is calling for the UK Government to put the wellbeing of people at the heart of decision-making.

Let’s put wellbeing first.