SOCIAL WELL-BEING

Social well-being measures the quality of life and trends in its most important factors divided into the following subareas: satisfaction/happiness, education, health, social climate, personal security, communication, and culture and leisure. The selected headline indicators generally have a positive impact on the well-being when their value grows in the subareas of satisfaction/happiness, education, health, social climate, communication, and culture and leisure, and a negative impact when their value grows in the subarea of personal security.

Table: Changes in the well-being in Slovenia and Slovenia’s position compared to the EU, shown with headline indicators by subareas, 2008–2013

SUBAREA, HEADLINE INDICATOR	SLOVENIA	SLOVENIA vs. EU
Satisfaction/happiness: Life satisfaction, in %	-	-
Education: Share of the population with at least secondary education, in %	+	-
Health: Life expectancy at birth (men, women), number of years	+	o*
Social climate: Trust in institutions – parliament, in %	-	-
Personal security: Mortality due to assault per 100,000 inhabitants, number	-*	-*
Communication: Broadband Internet access in households, in %	+	-
Culture and leisure: Satisfaction with distribution of time, average assessment	+**	+**

Source of data: The calculation is performed on data in the database (unstandardized data).
Note : * comparison 2008−2012, ** comparison 2006−2010.
Legend: improvement is marked green with the + sign, deterioration is marked red with the - sign, stagnation is marked with the 0 sign.

Until 2012 social well-being in Slovenia was mostly improving; however, in 2013 and 2014 the situation in the subareas of social climate and personal security deteriorated. The still relatively high social well-being is the consequence of the accessibility of public services. The headline indicators show improvement over a longer period (until 2013) or at least no deterioration in the subareas of education, health, communication, and culture and leisure. As regards the social climate, measured with trust in the parliament, the economic crisis led to a significant drop, which continued until 2013. As regards personal security, the headline and supplementary indicators deteriorated in 2011 and 2012. By 2013, the headline indicator of satisfaction/happiness had been deteriorating for a long time (except in 2012), but the expressed satisfaction was still relatively high. Provisional data for 2014 indicate continued deterioration of some personal security and social climate indicators as well as of some health indicators. Life satisfaction slightly improved in 2014, which is probably the consequence of greater expectations of respondents with the upturn in economic activity, which contributed to the growth of employment and earnings.

For most of the subareas, social well-being in Slovenia in 2013 was at a similar level as in the EU overall. Standing out are three subareas: in the subareas of education and personal security social well-being is higher in Slovenia than in the EU, but the gap is narrowing, while in the social climate subarea (trust in the parliament) it is much lower in Slovenia than in the EU and deteriorated significantly in the 2008–2013 period.