Age UK’s Index of Wellbeing in Later Life

We will present the theoretical and practical background underlying Age UK’s interest in the well-being of older people. We shall then describe the research processes and findings of a project carried out at Age UK which produced the first composite index of wellbeing in later life for the UK. Based upon a framework informed by the academic literature and a deliberative qualitative exercise with older people, we applied a number of statistical techniques (factor analysis, structural equation modelling, and principal component analysis) on data from theUnderstanding Society survey to estimate individual wellbeing scores out of over 130 different indicators. Finally, the application and usefulness of our research outcome will be described.