‘Vulnerable but Happy?’ Exploring Older People’s Wellbeing in the UK During the FirstCOVID-19 Lockdown

Abstract

This paper focuses on the wellbeing of a sample of older and predominantly middle-class UK individuals drawn from the Mass Observation Project (MOP) participant panel in 2020, covering the first months of the global COVID-19 pandemic and first UK national lockdown. It finds that socio-economic circumstances to some extent cushioned individuals against negative impacts of the pandemic but given the range of experiences within the sample, individual wellbeing cannot be explained by socio-economic position alone. Wellbeing emerged through a complex interaction of attitudes, activities, resources and circumstances, highlighting the dynamic interplay of agency and social structures that helps to understand more general features of living well. The findings also highlight that self-evaluated happiness depends partly on what individuals consider happiness to mean.