• Study series
• About this study
• Findings

English Longitudinal Study of Ageing wave 5 | Findings

The dynamics of ageing

The report exlored three key areas:

Pensions

-The majority of people asked had private pensions.

-People are taking a more gradual approach to retirement and consequently a more gradual approach to drawing pensions.

Social engagement

-Social engagement is closely intertwined with healthy and successful ageing.

-One in six people over 50 in England are socially isolated.

-Poorer people experience more social isolation: the wealthier over 50's half as likely to become socially isolated compared to the least wealthy

Wellbeing

-Those who had a greater enjoyment of life early on in the study were more likely to still be alive 9 to 10 years later than other participants.

-Wellbeing could be used to predict disability, reduced walking speed, impaired self-rated health, coronary heart disease.

-This link between well being and long term health and survival was independent of other factors such as age, gender, ethnicity, wealth, education and baseline health.