Wellbeing of Wales, 2024 - Foreword

This coming year marks 10 years since the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. This Act provides the foundations for the Wellbeing of Wales report, requiring us to annually take stock of the progress we are making towards the seven well-being goals.

This year we saw a small change to the definition of one of those seven goals. The Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act replaced the words “decent work” with “fair work” in the definition of the Prosperous Wales goal. This change means Welsh Ministers must review the national indicators and their associated milestones to ensure they still appropriately measure progress towards the newly worded goal. This review will be carried out ahead of the next Wellbeing of Wales report. As part of this review, we will consider the changes we made to the national indicators in 2021 which took on board the recommendations from the Fair Work Commission. 

What are the findings this year?

In previous Well-being of Wales reports we have found that inequalities are widening, the cost-of-living crisis has hit people’s incomes, and children and young people are faring worse since the pandemic. With a pause in the National Survey for Wales this year (which provides data for around a quarter of national indicators), there are a number of topics where data isn’t available to provide a more up-to-date assessment. But looking across the indicators which have been updated this year and at data from previous years, there is little evidence yet that these wider trends are changing.

There continues to be evidence that people who experience deprivation are likely to face poorer outcomes. On mental wellbeing, the gap between the most and least deprived areas has widened, and people living in material deprivation are more likely to be lonely. The gap in avoidable mortality between the most and least deprived areas is now at its highest level since 2003 for males and since the series began for females. Children eligible for free school meals still have poorer educational outcomes, with the gap at grades A* to C widening (but narrowing at A* to A). In addition, when looking at community cohesion, there is a clear trend towards feelings of an increased sense of community, satisfaction with the local area and safety after dark as deprivation in the area falls.

A new way of communicating progress

As we approach the 10 year anniversary of the Well-being of Future Generations Act, we have considered how we can continue to provide new insight and improved ways of communicating progress towards the well-being goals. Building on feedback from users, this year we are experimenting with a new way of showing progress, focusing on the 17 national milestones. The milestones are generational targets which describe the pace and scale of change needed in key areas under the seven well-being goals. We have looked at the data for each milestone since 2015, which was when the Well-being of Future Generations Act came into force, and assessed whether the trend has been improving or not since that date. 

Some of the 17 milestones have multiple parts to them, so in total we made 21 assessments of progress. 10 of these showed an improvement since 2015, suggesting that Wales is heading in the right direction towards the milestone. However in some cases, even though the trend may be moving in the right direction, we will need to move faster to reach the target by 2050. 5 milestones showed a deterioration, 5 showed little or no change, and for one milestone progress couldn’t be assessed because there was only one year of data. In most cases, the milestones continued to follow a longer term trend that was established before 2015.

You can read more about the approach we have taken in the national milestones chapter. As this is a new way of presenting this information, we are keen to hear your feedback on whether this helps you understand progress towards the well-being goals.

Stephanie Howarth
Chief Statistician