New ONS figures show an increase in loneliness, plummeting levels of trust in government and a fall in wellbeing in England as experts says GDP insufficient for post-pandemic recovery
A report published today by Carnegie UK has highlighted an increase in loneliness and a worrying decline in trust in government.
The charity has called for an urgent rethink on the overemphasis on economic data to measure the post-pandemic recovery.
Using data from the ONS Measures of National Wellbeing Dashboard, Carnegie UK – in collaboration with Diffley Partnership – has developed a score for collective wellbeing in England by bringing together a range of data to create a single figure. This can be tracked over time to tell whether wellbeing is going up or down.
The new report comes ahead of the latest ONS GDP figures that are due to be published on 3 August and are expected to show the UK economy grew in the second quarter of 2021.
But the data will also show a decline in wellbeing, which started before the pandemic and continued to drop as the country entered its first national lockdown in March 2021. The charity predicts that when it reports on 2020/21 levels later this year, this decline will be shown to have continued.
Sarah Davidson, CEO of Carnegie UK, said:
“Historically, each time we emerge from any kind of crisis, the government’s focus is on driving the economic recovery.
“These latest figures on England’s wellbeing show we need to focus as much on the human recovery as on the economic one.
“COVID-19 has sparked new conversations and renewed existing ones about what exactly social progress is. We now have an opportunity to rethink how progress as a country captures the complexity of people’s lives and their wellbeing. GDWe offers an alternative, more human-focussed measure of a country’s progress and we urge policy makers to consider this on the road to recovery.”
Caroline Lucas MP said:
“The worrying decline in collective wellbeing is a sign that current government priorities just aren’t delivering for most people. Official measures of success like GDP growth don’t translate into people feeling better about their lives.
“Using Gross Domestic Wellbeing (GDWe) instead of GDP growth as the guiding star for economic policy making would be a major step towards measuring what matters most to people and would ensure we build back fairer and greener from the pandemic.”
Carnegie UK says the delay in the release of official data on England’s wellbeing must be addressed urgently. At the moment, there is a 17 month wait until ONS data on wellbeing is available, rather than the 8 month wait for economic data.
