Accumulation of favourable and unfavourable outcomes

The section on Indicators examined how well-being ‘here and now’ of various population groups differs from that of the total population for individual indicators. If a population group scores below average on an indicator, however, this does not mean that everyone in that group has a low score for that indicator. For example, an average 83 percent of the population are satisfied with life, but in the 18- to 24-year-old age group this is 75 percent. Although this is lower than average, most of these young adults are still happy with their lives. Moreover, not everyone who scores below average on one of the indicators will also do so on other indicators for which the group they belong to scores lower than average.

However, sometimes it is the same people who have favourable or unfavourable outcomes for several individual indicators. This raises the question of whether favourable or unfavourable outcomes are evenly distributed across everyone in a population group, or is it the same people who always score above and below average? In other words: do favourable or unfavourable outcomes accumulate? To find out if this is the case, we examine a selection of well-being ‘here and now’ indicators. If favourable or unfavourable outcomes stack up in particular groups, we look at the extent to which this occurs, and for whom: what are the characteristics of these individual people?

Situation of population groups in 2022
Changes between 2019 and 2022

The data on how many favourable and unfavourable outcomes stack up at individual level are based on the CBS Social cohesion & Well-being survey 2022, together with figures from the Integrated Income and Wealth Statistics for the previous year. For each person, we determined how he or she ‘scores’ on various well-being indicators. The selected indicators are all included in the eight original well-being ‘here and now’ themes.

In principle, we wanted to include one indicator from each of the eight themes. In practice we achieved this for six of the eight themes, and – in consultation with subject-matter experts – included two indicators for both material well-being and society. Also, as the theme labour and leisure time concerns two subjects, it is also described with two indicators. Together this results in a total of nine indicators, which are shown in the table Indicators for accumulation of favourable and unfavourable outcomes , along with the outcome ranges designated as favourable or unfavourable. Although the set of indicators used here is the same as the set used in the 2022 edition of the monitor, it should be noted that they differ from the reference year 2019. For comparison purposes, some analyses have therefore been repeated for reference year 2019. More detailed information can be found in the explanatory notes.

Overall picture of distribution on well-being

On average in 2022, people had favourable outcomes for 5.2 of the nine indicators, neutral outcomes for 2.4 indicators and unfavourable outcomes for 1.4 indicators. For the purposes of the analysis, the group of people with favourable well-being outcomes for seven or more indicators constitutes the top of the distribution. This group represents 22.7 percent of the population. The group of people with at least three unfavourable outcomes constitutes the bottom of the distribution; 18.6 percent of the population belong to this group. The remainder (58.7 percent) make up the middle of the distribution.

As a result of changes in the indicator set and in the boundaries between the upper and lower ends of the distribution, accumulation figures in pre-2022 editions of the monitor are not directly comparable with the figures in this edition. If the new selection and boundaries are applied to 2019 data, the group of people for whom favourable outcomes converge is smaller (22.7 percent now, versus 24.7 percent in 2019). The group of people for whom unfavourable outcomes accumulate has also become smaller (18.6 percent now compared with 20.1 percent in 2019). The middle group – for whom neither favourable nor unfavourable outcomes stack up – has increased (from 55.2 percent in 2019 to 58.7 percent in 2022). Although the group at the top of the distribution is smaller than in 2019, in 2020 and 2021 it was larger (27.5 and 25.7 percent respectively).

Situation of population groups in 2022

As we have seen, both education level and origin/country of birth strongly correlate with above average or below average well-being. Differences between age categories are also substantial, while differences between men and women are relatively small. Below we describe the extent to which individual people in these population groups experience an accumulation of favourable or unfavourable outcomes.

• Education level. There are major differences between education levels in the accumulation of favourable and unfavourable outcomes: the top of the distribution, with a high level of well-being, includes 37 percent of higher educated people, compared with 19 percent of people with medium levels and 9 percent with lower levels of education. People in the latter group are more likely to be at the bottom of the distribution; this is the case for 32 percent of this group. The proportions are significantly smaller for medium levels (18 percent) and high levels of education (9 percent). The accumulation of favourable outcomes is therefore strongly concentrated among the higher educated, while those with lower levels account for most of the accumulation of unfavourable outcomes. This picture is consistent with previous years. Lower educated people are relatively more likely to have unfavourable scores for paid work, trust in other people, income and health.
• Origin/country of birth. The analysis of accumulation of favourable and unfavourable outcomes among people in the different origin/country-of-birth groups is by and large similar to the results from the 13 separate indicators, but slightly more nuanced. People born in the Netherlands with parents born in the Netherlands are more likely to be in the top of the distribution, and relatively less likely at the bottom. People born outside Europe, or with parents born outside Europe are more likely to be at the bottom of the distribution and less likely at the top. Eleven percent of people who were themselves born outside Europe are in the top group of the distribution, 37 percent of them are in the bottom group. In the group born in the Netherlands with at least one parent born outside Europe, this is 15 and 26 percent respectively. People living in the Netherlands with one or two parents born elsewhere in Europe, and people themselves born elsewhere in Europe are slightly more likely to be in the top group and slightly less likely in the bottom group compared with both the group born outside Europe and their Dutch-born children. The group born outside Europe score relatively unfavourably, particularly with regard to wealth, income, trust in others and paid employment.
• Age. People aged 45 to 64 years are relatively likely to be at the top of the distribution. Favourable outcomes stack up for three in ten of them; this is above the average of 23 percent. Results were less positive for the over-65s: 16 percent of people aged between 65 and 74 years and 7 percent of the over-75s have an accumulation of favourable outcomes. In the latter group, unfavourable outcomes nevertheless accumulate less than average: 12 percent versus an average of 19 percent. This means that a relatively large number of over-75s are in the middle group: 81 percent of them have fewer than three unfavourable outcomes, but also fewer than seven favourable ones. A stack of unfavourable outcomes can be seen for 65- to 74-year-olds, however: 27 percent (compared with 19 percent on average). So the accumulation picture for people in this age group differs from the picture for 65- to 74-year-olds on the basis of the 13 well-being indicators: there the group had more favourable than unfavourable outcomes. People aged 65 years and older are logically less likely to be in paid employment, and therefore relatively often score unfavourably on income, but they also score relatively unfavourably in terms of health. On the other hand, they are less likely to score unfavourably for wealth and satisfaction with leisure time.
• Sex. Men are slightly more likely to be at the top of the distribution (24 percent) than women (21 percent). At the bottom, men and women are nearly equally likely to have an accumulation of unfavourable outcomes, at 19 and 18 percent. This means that women are more likely than men to be in the middle group in which there is no accumulation of favourable or unfavourable outcomes. Women are less likely than men to score favourably for having paid employment, income, trust in other people and health, although the differences between men and women are not as large as between other characteristics.

As well as population characteristics, the indicators themselves also correlate to a certain degree. Income and wealth, for example, but self-perceived health and having or not having paid employment are also related. If we take account of the correlations between indicators, we see that health is the main determinant of the number of favourable outcomes. Next comes being in paid employment, followed by satisfaction with leisure time which also both correlate closely with the number of favourable outcomes. Health and having work are the most significant indicators for the number of unfavourable outcomes, followed by trust in other people.

Within the various population groups, specific indicators are relatively more or less important than average in terms of the number of favourable or unfavourable outcomes they contribute to. Satisfaction with the amount of leisure time has more effect on the number of favourable outcomes for people younger than 45 years than for other age groups, and for 35- to 44-year-olds satisfaction with the home is one of the main determinants of the number of favourable outcomes. For the over-75s wealth has a larger determining effect, while paid work is less important in this group.
While health, paid work and trust in other people are on average the main determinants for the number of unfavourable outcomes, for the over-75s having work is relatively less important and income has relatively more effect, for those aged 25 to 34 years (dis)satisfaction with leisure time is more often associated with the number of unfavourable outcomes than for other age groups. For people born outside Europe, satisfaction with the home is also relatively more decisive for the number of unfavourable outcomes than for other origin/country of birth groups.

Changes between 2019 and 2022

As the indicator set and the boundaries between the upper and lower ends of the distribution were revised in 2022, accumulation figures for 2019 in previous editions of this monitor are not directly comparable with the results in this edition. To illustrate accumulation trends, the new indicator set and boundaries have also been applied to the data for reference year 2019. This shows that 2 percentage points fewer people are in the top group of the distribution (22.7 percent in 2022 compared with 24.7 percent in 2019). The group at the bottom has shrunk by 1.5 percentage points.

The share of men at the top of the distribution has decreased by 3 percentage points, the share of women in the top group is 1 percentage point smaller. At the bottom of the distribution, the group of men has hardly shrunk, while for women this group with accumulated unfavourable outcomes is 2 percentage points smaller. For both men and women, the middle group is larger than in 2019.

If we look at changes for the various age groups, we see that the share of the 18- to 34-year-olds at the upper end of the distribution has shrunk by 6 percentage points. The proportion of this age group at the bottom end of the distribution changed by less, so a larger group now falls in the middle of the distribution than in 2019. Among 45- to 74-year-olds the upper end of the distribution grew only slightly, while the share at the bottom of the distribution fell by 2 to 4 percentage points.

For the different education levels, we see that changes were relatively unfavourable for people with high and medium levels of education: 3 percentage points fewer in the top of the distribution in 2022. Both groups started out from a good position, however. The share of lower educated at the top of the distribution remains unchanged. Although substantial differences in stacked favourable and unfavourable outcomes remain between education levels, the groups with high and medium levels of education have shifted slightly closer to the group with low education levels.

In the case of origin/country of birth, most notably a larger proportion of people born in the Netherlands with one or both parents born outside Europe were in the middle group of the distribution in 2022 (11 percentage points up). This is mainly because the share in the top group decreased, by 10 percentage points. For people who were themselves born outside Europe, there is also a visible shift towards the middle group.