Well-being is a key outcome of healthy ageing and reflects whether older people are able to live lives they value. Many older adults maintain high levels of well-being despite the presence of one or more health conditions, particularly when functional ability is supported by enabling environments and appropriate health and social care. Monitoring the proportion of older people with high well-being provides an important population-level measure of progress toward the goals of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing and supports identification of population groups requiring targeted interventions to improve quality of life.
Definition:
Subjective well-being refers to an individual’s perceived quality of life and positive psychological functioning, including positive mood, vitality, and interest in daily life. In this indicator, subjective well-being is measured using the WHO-5 Well-Being Index, which captures how frequently respondents experience positive feelings and functioning.
Disaggregation:
Age (five-year age groups), sex, income level, education level, place of residence (administrative region and urban/rural), setting (community or residential care), disability status, and nationally relevant population groups.
Method of measurement
This indicator is measured using responses to the WHO-5 Well-Being Index collected through nationally representative population surveys of older people. The WHO-5 includes five items asking respondents how often during the past two weeks they have felt: cheerful and in good spirits; calm and relaxed; active and vigorous; fresh and rested on waking; and that daily life has been filled with things that interest them. Responses are recorded on a six-point frequency scale ranging from 0 ("at no time") to 5 ("all of the time"). Before computing the score, responses coded as "don’t know" or "refuse" are treated as missing values and excluded from the score calculation. A raw well-being score is computed by summing the five item responses, producing a total score ranging from 0 to 25, where higher values indicate greater subjective well-being. The raw score is then transformed to a 0–100 scale by multiplying the raw score by four. Values exceeding the theoretical maximum due to data inconsistencies are capped at 100 to preserve the scale range.
Respondents are classified as having high well-being if their standardized WHO-5 score is equal to or greater than 75. The numerator is the number of older people whose WHO-5 score meets or exceeds this threshold. The denominator includes all older respondents with valid responses sufficient to compute the WHO-5 score. The indicator is calculated as the proportion of respondents classified as having high well-being among those with valid scores, multiplied by 100. Estimates should apply survey sampling weights and account for complex survey design where applicable. For comparisons across populations, prevalence estimates may be age- and sex-standardized to a common reference population.
Because this indicator is currently classified as Tier III, the proposed operational definition and threshold should be interpreted as provisional and require further validation. Additional psychometric and cross-country validation studies are needed to assess the reliability, cultural comparability, and predictive validity of the WHO-5–based high well-being classification across diverse populations of older people.
Other possible data sources:
None recommended
Preferred data sources:
Published nationally-representative population-based surveys
This indicator relies on self-reported perceptions of well-being and may be influenced by cultural differences in how positive emotions and life satisfaction are interpreted and reported. The WHO-5 instrument uses a two-week recall period, which captures recent well-being and may not fully represent longer-term well-being across the past year. Responses may also be affected by temporary circumstances, social desirability bias, or response styles. The WHO-5 primarily captures emotional and psychological aspects of well-being and does not fully represent other dimensions such as financial security, social meaning, or spiritual fulfilment that may be important to older people in different contexts. Finally, the choice of threshold used to classify high well-being can influence prevalence estimates and should be evaluated through future validation studies to ensure comparability across populations.
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