Life in Your Early 50s Survey: a first look

Thank you again to everyone who took part in the Life in Your Early 50s Survey between 2021 and 2024.

Here’s just a small snapshot of some of the things you told us when we caught up with you.

Health and wellbeing

• Your health, a good partner, and good friends are more important to you than other things we asked you about, such as having a lot of money or owning your own home.

• Most of you are feeling well, with just under three-quarters reporting good, very good or excellent health. However, over a fifth of you told us your health had got worse in the last year.

• More than eight in 10 of you feel optimistic about the future at least some of the time. 

Work life

• More than eight in 10 of you in work said you were satisfied with your jobs.

• But work still can get difficult, with almost three in 10 finding work stressful a lot or all of the time.

• Looking ahead, two thirds of you reported being concerned to at least some extent about how much money you would have to live on in retirement. 

Family time

• Your families are expanding! Nearly a quarter of you are now grandparents.

• Around four in 10 of your generation regularly help your parents with practical tasks, like shopping and cooking, and just under two in 10 provide regular help to a parent-in-law.

• Women are more likely than men to help parents regularly with shopping and giving lifts to places. Men are more likely to do decorating, gardening and other jobs around the home. 

Leisure 

• You love your pets! Two thirds of you have a pet of some kind, almost half have a dog, and a quarter have a cat.

• Just under a quarter of you said you read for pleasure every day. But around the same number say you never read for pleasure at all.

  The information you shared will soon be made available to researchers across the world to analyse. Look out for updates on new findings here on our website and on Facebook.