The impact of living in age diverse areas on health and well-being

有证据表明，英国的代际分化越来越严重。其中一个主要原因是我们居住的地方越来越“年龄隔离”。这意味着年轻人倾向于住在年轻人多的地方，老年人倾向于住在老年人多的地方。深刻的代沟可能对社会凝聚力和有效的社会运作产生影响。决策者担心，这可能会产生负面的健康、经济、社会和政治代价。事实上，决议基金会最近的一份报告估计，年龄隔离每年可能给英国经济造成60亿英镑的损失。然而，英国目前还没有研究能够直接测试居住在年龄混合较多的地区是否会对人们产生影响。通过将地方一级不同年龄组的人数信息与长期调查的信息联系起来，我们的项目将是第一个这样做的项目。我们将创建一个新的衡量标准，称为“年龄多样性的区域水平指数”，适用于英国的所有住宅区（这些地区在英格兰和威尔士被称为低超级产出区，在苏格兰被称为数据区）。与现有的措施，往往只侧重于年轻人与老年人，这一新的措施将使用来自所有年龄的人的信息，以更好地了解一个地区的年龄组的组合。我们打算用这些信息做的第一件事是制作一系列英国地图，以显示哪些地方或多或少有年龄差异。这些信息将对地方政府、议会、城市规划者等非常有用。一旦我们完成了这一点，我们将把我们新的年龄多样性衡量标准与生活在英国的大约5万人的信息联系起来，这些人是一项长期研究（称为英国家庭纵向调查）的一部分。这将使我们能够了解居住在有广泛（或狭窄）年龄组人群的地区是否会影响人们的健康（例如，该人是否患有疾病或慢性病），幸福感（例如孤独），公民参与（例如，是否有人自愿）以及邻里质量（例如，人们是否信任他们的邻居）。我们的研究结果将提供一个非常需要的证据基础上的程度，当地地区水平的年龄多样性在英国和什么样的影响（如果有的话），这对人们的生活。

There is evidence that Britain is becoming more and more generationally divided. A major part of this is that the places where we live have become increasingly 'age segregated'. This means younger people tend to live in places where there are more younger people and older people tend to live in places where there are more older people. Deep generational divisions can have implications for social cohesion and effective societal functioning. Policy makers are concerned that this could have negative health, economic, social and political costs. Indeed, a recent report by the Resolution Foundation estimated that age-segregation could cost the UK economy £6 billion per year. However, there is currently no research in Britain that has been able to directly test whether living in areas with a greater mix of ages has an impact on people. By linking information on the number of people in different age groups at the local level with information from a long running survey, our project will be the first to do this. We will create a new measure, called the 'area level index of age diversity', for all the residential areas in Great Britain (these are called Lower Super Output Areas in England and Wales and Data Zones in Scotland). Unlike existing measures which tend to focus just on younger versus older adults, this new measure will use information from people of all ages to get a better idea of the mix of age groups in an area. The first thing we intend to do with this information is to produce a series of maps of Britain to show which local areas are more or less age diverse. This information will be very useful for local government, councils, city planners and the like. Once we have done this, we will then link our new measure of age diversity to information on around 50,000 people living in Britain who have been part of a long running study (called the UK Household Longitudinal Survey). This will enable us to see whether living in areas that have people from a wide (or narrow) range of age groups impacts on people's health (e.g. whether the person has an illness or chronic condition), well-being (e.g. loneliness), civic participation (e.g. whether someone volunteers or not), and neighbourhood quality (e.g. whether people trust their neighbours). Our findings will provide a much needed evidence base on the extent of local area level age diversity in Britain and what effect (if any) this has on people's lives.