How happy, anxious or satisfied with life are people in and around Glasgow?

Every year, the Office of National Statistics asks people a series of simple questions:

  • overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
  • overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
  • overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
  • overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

It’s all part of a nationwide project to measure our wellbeing. This week, the ONS has released the results for 2016, broken down by local authority. We’ve  looked at the picture in the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde areas.

The findings are complicated and it’s difficult to draw conclusions on what they mean, much less the reasons for it. However, there are some interesting points:

  • on the whole, reported wellbeing has improved in the five years since the survey began 🙂
  • a comparison of the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde areas shows that wellbeing levels are lowest in Glasgow, against all measures
  • people East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire appear to have the highest levels of mental wellbeing across the board

It’s always tempting, but inadvisable, to read into results like these. It’s especially difficult to compare areas with very large populations, like Glasgow, with much smaller areas like East Renfrewshire.

However, it would be really interesting to see how these results rate against the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. Is it as simple as saying that people in more affluent areas are happier? Or is there something else going on?

You can have a play around with the results here:

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