The new UK focus on well-being: what will it mean for tackling social inequalities in health?

The new UK focus on well-being: what will it mean for tackling social inequalities in health? It is difficult to imagine who would not be in favour of improving well-being. Yet a major problem with well-being is knowing what different commentators understand by the term. First introduced by the World Health Organization in 1948, 1 there is still little consensus over how well-being should be defined. 2,3 The UK Treasury proposes a generic concept, encompassing subjective measures of happiness or satisfaction, and objective well-being indicated by some measure of quality of life. 4 More recently, the National Statistician convened a Well-being Forum, supported by a national debate, to inform the development of new measures of well-being that will encompass quality of life, environmental sustainability and economic performance. Public responses to the consultation were used to propose key domains for further consultation; individual well-being influenced by relationships, health, where we live, what we do, personal finance, education and skills, and the contextual domains of governance, the natural environment and the economy. The well-being of children and young people was identified by respondents to the public consultation as an area of particular concern, and the Office for National Statistics has formed a workstream to look at measurement of well-being in this age group. 6 According to Save the Children, improving child well-being is not only a moral duty; it is a legal and political obligation. 7 Members of the Coalition government first asserted their commitment to the future of Britain's children when in opposition, in response to a UNICEF study that found the well-being of children in the UK to be worse than in 20 other high-income countries. 8,9 The Prime Minister went on to propose the development of a measure for happiness, to provide a more nuanced measure of 'pro-gress' than gross domestic product. 10 To date, empirical measurement of child well-being has employed definitions that encompass or overlap established social determinants of health such as material circumstances and education. UNICEF replaced child poverty in their comparative analyses of economically advanced nations with an index of child well-being made up of six dimensions: material circumstances , education, safety in the community, family and peer relationships, risk behaviours and subjective well-being. 9 In a study across 23 rich countries, this index was shown to be negatively correlated with income inequality and the proportion of children in relative poverty. 11 More recently, UNICEF …