Society | The State of Ageing 2025 | Centre for Ageing Better

Key points

Older volunteers play an integral role in supporting local communities. However, there has been a decline in volunteering in recent years and volunteer numbers have struggled to recover post-pandemic.
Despite the contribution older people make to their communities, negative attitudes towards ageing and older people remain rife in the UK. Institutional, interpersonal and self-directed ageism limit people’s lives as they grow older, but this is not inevitable and needs to be challenged.
Our local neighbourhoods becomes increasingly important to us as we age. And older people tend to be more positive than younger people about where they live, with comparatively more older people saying they feel they belong and are satisfied with their local areas.
However, there are clear inequalities in how connected and satisfied people feel in their communities. Older people in more deprived communities still feel a sense of belonging but also increasing dissatisfaction with the decline in amenities and services available to them and the wider community.
The UK Network of Age-friendly Communities is a vital resource for creating places where we can all age well, and for promoting community cohesion among people of different age groups and with different backgrounds.
The digital world remains a challenge for many people, particularly those who face other structural disadvantages, such as poverty or lower qualifications. Millions of older people are excluded or limited in how they engage online. Businesses and services need to provide alternative options to ensure that marginalised communities are not excluded.

What needs to happen

National government: Establish a Commissioner for Older People and Ageing for England to give a voice to the many older people who are currently marginalised, so their diverse experiences and the issues that matter to them are represented in policymaking across the board, including housing, employment and pension decisions
National government: Provide every local authority with the resources it needs to become an Age-friendly Community, enabling more people to age well, stay living in their homes and contribute to their local communities for as long as possible.
National government: Ensure the recently announced Digital Inclusion Action Plan specifically targets the challenges facing older people, including involving charities representing older people in the Digital Inclusion Action Committee. Age is strongly associated with digital exclusion, and millions of older people are excluded or limited in how they engage online.
Local government: Respond to local demographic change and create local communities where older people can be active, involved and shape the places they live in.
Local government: All local and strategic authorities to appoint an elected member to act as a champion for ageing and older people to ensure that the needs of current and future older people are considered in the design and delivery of local services and infrastructures, for example, by creating opportunities to involve older people in decision-making.
National and local government: Invest in community spaces, high streets and public transport, and in making communities accessible and walkable, with features such as toilets and seating, so people can participate in and contribute to their communities as they grow older.
National and local government: Continue to provide offline services for people who are unable to use online alternatives for reasons such as cost, language barriers or disability. This should be accompanied by support for people to get online – for example by improving their digital skills or providing social tariffs for broadband.
Everyone: Organisations to put in place effective policies to tackle ageism and individuals to challenge ageist behaviour. As our national campaign Age Without Limits highlights, we want everyone, both individuals and organisations, to notice ageism, which has an impact on all our lives.

Support the role that community services and the voluntary sector play in health and wellbeing

National and local government and other funders need to provide secure, multi-year funding to community-based organisations that support older people, especially Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic-led organisations, many of which are severely underfunded. These organisations provide essential support and services that enable older people to feel connected to their community, and to age well.
Local government and voluntary organisations need to ensure that community services are inclusive and effectively reach and support minority ethnic communities.
Voluntary and community organisations need to promote age-friendly, flexible and inclusive volunteering to increase the number and diversity of volunteers and address the drop-off in volunteering in older age groups.

Improve representation and reduce ageism

The diversity of our older population must be better reflected in media and advertising to tackle ageist attitudes and inaccurate representations of what older age looks like. IPSO, the independent body that regulates most of the UK’s newspapers and magazines, needs to add age to Clause 12 of its Editors’ Code of Practice, which focuses on avoiding discrimination.
As our national campaign Age Without Limits highlights, we want everyone, both individuals and organisations, to notice ageism, which has an impact on all our lives. Organisations need to put in place effective policies to tackle ageism. And we also want individuals to feel able to challenge ageist behaviour.

Improve national and local data quality

National surveys need to increase data sample sizes to enable analysis by age combined with other characteristics such as ethnicity or geography. This is vital if local and national policymakers are to take account of growing diversity and inequality within older age groups.

Volunteering

Many older people make vital contributions to their communities through volunteering and helping others. Formal volunteering includes giving unpaid help through groups, clubs and organisations, while informal volunteering includes giving unpaid help to people who are not relatives, such as shopping for a neighbour. Both are important, not only for communities but also for the wellbeing of the people who volunteer.

People aged 65 and over are still most likely to volunteer but volunteering rates have not recovered since the end of the pandemic in any age group

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What does the chart show?

People aged 65 to 74 are most likely to volunteer both formally and informally at least once a month (i.e. regularly).
Rates of regular formal volunteering are still lower than pre-pandemic levels, although the rate for the oldest age group (people aged 75 and over who were required to shield during the pandemic) has recovered slightly.
- Before the pandemic 23% of people aged 50 to 64 volunteered formally at least once a month. This has now fallen to 16%.
- Among people aged 65 to 74, the rate of regular formal volunteering fell from 31% pre-pandemic to 22% in 2020/21, and it has only recovered by one percentage point since then.
- Among people aged 75 and over, the recovery has been better but still only 21% of this age group volunteer formally at least once a month compared with 25% in 2019/20.
In 2023/24, rates of regular informal volunteering were at their lowest for at least eight years. In contrast to formal volunteering, there was an initial spike in regular informal volunteering during the pandemic, except for people aged 75 and over, but since then rates have continued to fall, for the population as a whole and for all age groups aged 50 and over.

We also know that:

Rates of volunteering for adults of all ages vary according to a number of different factors:
- People are more likely to do regular formal volunteering if they live in a less deprived area but where someone lives makes no difference to informal volunteering rates. If someone lives in one of the least deprived areas in England, they are more than twice as likely to volunteer formally at least once a month than someone living in one of the most deprived areas. More than one in five (22%) people in the least deprived 10% of areas (according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation) formally volunteer, compared with 10% of people in the most deprived 10% of areas.
- People are most likely to do regular formal volunteering if they live in the South West (which has the highest proportion of older people) and least likely if they live in the North East. Regionally regular formal volunteering rates range from 13% in the North East to 20% in the South West. Again there is little variation in informal volunteering.
- People from Black backgrounds (20%) are more likely to volunteer formally at least once a month than people from White or Mixed backgrounds (17%) and people from Asian backgrounds (14%). People from both Black backgrounds (31%) and Mixed backgrounds (27%) are more likely than people from Asian or White backgrounds (24%) to volunteer informally. Within this, there is considerable variation within the Asian background category with informal volunteering rates ranging from 18% for Chinese people to 31% for Bangladeshi people, demonstrating the importance of sample sizes that allow analysis by specific ethnic groups (see our technical report for more details).
- Disabled people (16%) are slightly less likely than non-disabled people (17%) to volunteer formally at least once a month but they are more likely to volunteer informally (28% compared with 23%).
- We will be doing more analysis of this data to see if these demographic patterns apply to older people.
Caring responsibilities and health issues are two of the main barriers to volunteering among older people. The fact that older people living in more deprived areas are more likely to experience poor health and have greater unpaid caring responsibilities, may account for the lower rates of formal volunteering seen in these areas.

[Organising social events in the extra care scheme] takes my mind off things that are going on in my own life... I need that break. I know that sounds awful, but when you're looking after someone who’s seriously ill, it's hard work, and I needed to be myself again.

Woman in her sixties, Knowsley

Local communities

As we age our local communities become increasingly important to us. An Age-friendly Community is a place that enables people to age well and live a good later life by supporting people to remain in their homes, participate in the activities they value, and contribute to their communities for as long as possible. This requires both good physical infrastructure, such as age-friendly transport and business premises, and good social infrastructure, such as services and activities. Shared spaces such as parks, libraries and cafes provide opportunities to mix with people from different cultures and generations, which builds community cohesion and resilience.

The proportion of people aged 50 to 64 who feel a strong sense of belonging to their neighbourhood has declined since 2020/21 – but they are still more likely than younger people to feel this way

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What does the chart show?

Older people are more likely to have a strong sense of belonging to their neighbourhood than younger people – a difference that has been maintained over time.
While the proportion of younger people who feel a very or fairly strong sense of belonging to their neighbourhood has increased in the last decade, it has remained relatively unchanged among people aged 50 and over.
Early in the pandemic (between 2019/20 and 2020/21) there was an uptick in the proportion of people in every age group who felt a very or fairly strong sense of belonging to their neighbourhood.
This proportion then dropped sharply between 2020/21 and 2021/22 and then continued to decline among people aged 25 to 64. This is likely to be linked to people returning to work and spending less time in their local neighbourhood.
Among people aged 65 and over there has been a slight recovery in the proportion who feel they very or fairly strongly belong to their neighbourhood since the end of the pandemic, but levels are still lower than their peak in 2018/19.

We also know that:

A sense of belonging varies by place as well as age. English Housing Survey data shows that the proportion of people who felt a sense of belonging to their neighbourhood in 2022/23 was higher for the least deprived 10% of areas than for the most deprived 10% of areas across all age groups.
Market research conducted for our Age Without Limits campaign found that:
- Almost a quarter (23%) of people aged 50 and over feel less valued in their community as they age, and this is highest among people aged 50 to 64 (27%).
- Only around a third (35%) of people aged 50 and over think there are enough activities and groups in their area to allow them to feel connected to their local community, with another third (36%) disagreeing and the remainder (29%) being unsure. This suggests that a lack of accessible information is an issue as well as a lack of provision.

See our technical report for more details.

What we heard from older people:

In our conversations with older people in Middlesbrough and Knowsley many people said they feel a strong sense of community, linked to their connections with others in their neighbourhood, which are sometimes fostered through groups and activities. However, many of the older people we spoke to mourned the loss or decline of amenities such as libraries and community halls, both for themselves and for younger people. A lack of timely offline information about the provision of groups and activities is also an issue.

I wouldn't move from where I live. I would say, mainly it's my neighbours. I mean, I've got one lad next door, every two weeks when he cuts his grass, he lifts the panel up and brings a mower through, and he does mine. And his wife goes out shopping, she always texts me ‘Anything you need?’. The girl over the road does it, the girl the other side does it... I wouldn't swap them for a big clock.

Woman in her seventies, Knowsley

The [local] library... is really good. We do tai chi on a Tuesday afternoon, and AgeUK coffee afternoon on Thursday afternoon. So we've got quite a good little group going, and if we want something in the library that's not there, they’ll try their very best to do it.

Woman in her sixties, Middlesbrough

Young people don't even come into Middlesbrough so they'll never develop any affinity with it. There's nothing here for them to have any interaction. We used to go to libraries and things like that, they were always in the town, and now there's nothing to drag them in.

Older woman, Middlesbrough

Older people tend to feel more satisfied with their neighbourhood than younger people, but satisfaction is below pre-pandemic levels and declining

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What does the chart show?

As with a sense of belonging, older people are more likely than younger people to feel satisfied with their neighbourhood.
The proportion of people who feel satisfied with their neighbourhood has now fallen below pre-pandemic levels in every age group except for those aged 75 and over. Among this age group, a greater proportion of people feel satisfied with their neighbourhood than before the pandemic, despite a small drop in the last two years.
The decline over time is more striking when you look at the proportion of people who felt satisfied with their neighbourhood in 2023/24 compared with 2015/16. Satisfaction fell for all age groups over this eight-year period, with an eight percentage point drop for people aged 35 to 49 and 50 to 64.

We also know that:

People who live in more deprived areas are less likely to feel satisfied with their neighbourhood: 57% of people aged 16 and over are satisfied with their neighbourhood in the most deprived 20% of areas, and this increases in each quintile up to 87% of people in the least deprived 20% of areas, a 30 percentage point difference.
Over the last two years, satisfaction fell six percentage points in the most deprived 20% of areas compared with one percentage point in the least deprived 20%, which means that inequality in this measure has increased.
Older people from Black, Asian, Mixed and Other ethnic backgrounds tend to be less satisfied with their neighbourhood than people from White backgrounds. We will be analysing ethnicity data by age when it becomes available.
Our own research suggests that:
- Only half (49%) of people aged 50 and over feel positive about growing older where they live now, with a third (33%) feeling neutral and one in six (17%) feeling negative.
- Only a quarter (24%) of people aged 50 and over think that the voices of older people are sufficiently represented and heard regarding changes and developments where they live.

See our technical report for more details.

What we heard from older people:

In our conversations with older people in Middlesbrough and Knowsley there was considerable dissatisfaction with the run-down nature of neighbourhoods and town centres and the loss of shops and other physical amenities, as well as frustration with the slow pace of regeneration where this had been promised. Problems with public transport, including timetabling issues and safety concerns, also make it difficult for many people to maintain social connections and access services.

While many people said they were dissatisfied with their town centre, and some with their immediate neighbourhood, people are often proud of the wider area and surrounding countryside.

It's changed so much over the years that we just seem to be going round in circles. It does need a lot of changes here, and there has been a lot of regeneration, but I don't think it's been rapid enough. There's a lot of derelict areas… I'm 73 years of age now, and it doesn't encourage me to even be here another couple of years. I would move out of the area unless I see something that encourages me, and it doesn’t at this moment.

Man in his seventies, Knowsley

I have to get two buses to go shopping, then a taxi home, and it’s costing a small fortune.

Older woman, Knowsley

There’s so much beautiful countryside nearby, and as I say, the coast as well.

Woman in her eighties, Middlesbrough

Ageism

Ageism is discrimination against someone because of their age. It may be dismissed as being harmless but evidence shows that it causes significant damage to individuals, the economy and society.

There are three main types of ageism:

Institutional ageism is embedded in laws, rules, social norms, policies and the practices of institutions.
Interpersonal ageism occurs in the interactions between individuals
Self-directed ageism happens when a person internalises ageism due to repeated exposure to ageist messages and, as a result, modifies their own thinking and behaviour.

More than a third of women have been patronised because of their age since turning 50

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What does the chart show?

Being patronised is the most common experience of ageism, with nearly a third (31%) of people having experienced it since turning 50. It is significantly more commonly experienced by women (36%) than by men (24%), as are some other types of interpersonal ageism such as being ignored (27% of women compared to 17% of men) or dismissed by people (18% women compared to 12% men).
People aged 50 and over have also experienced institutional ageism, including missing out on opportunities at work (17%) and discrimination in diagnosis or treatment by a health care professional (20%). Women are significantly more likely than men to report poor treatment by a health care professional (23% compared with 16%).
Almost one in five (19%) people say they have stopped themselves from taking part in an activity since turning 50 because they think it might not be appropriate for their age, an example of self-directed ageism.

We also know that:

Our research has found that 45% of people can recall having been spoken to or treated negatively by someone else because of their age, an example of interpersonal ageism. (See our technical report for more details.)
We also found that:
- The most common consequence of interpersonal ageism is not taking part in a social activity (reported by 34% of people aged 50 and over who had experienced interpersonal ageism), followed by no longer thinking positively about the future (27%), not taking part in discussions (25%), avoiding or limiting physical activity (24%) and not asking for help or support (24%).
- The most common consequence of self-directed ageism is also not taking part in a social activity (reported by 34% of people aged 50 and over who had experienced any type of ageism), followed by avoiding or limiting physical activity (31%), not going to certain places (24%) and not seeking help for a health complaint (24%). (See our technical report for more details.)
These consequences affect people’s health and wellbeing, and also limit people’s engagement with their local community as they age. However, although we all age, ageism is not inevitable and needs to be challenged. Our Age Without Limits campaign aims to equip people of all ages to change negative attitudes towards ageing and older people.

What we heard from older people:

In our conversations with older people in Middlesbrough and Knowsley we heard that they had sometimes experienced a lack of respect in interactions with others, or unsatisfactory treatment by services, because of their age.

I feel sometimes, as an older person... like you’re slowly becoming invisible. You know, I feel as though I'm fading away… like when you're in shops and like, you know, anything, like the GP surgery, or… you've got a query in the hospital, or whatever, it's as though ‘that old woman over there’.

Woman in her fifties, Knowsley

But that's my main concern is that, for some reason, all your [organisations and services]... how can I put it, it's a difficult one, because I experience it every day, where I live, they seem to be neglecting… older people.

Man in his eighties, Knowsley

Digital inclusion

Age is strongly associated with digital exclusion. If you are older, you are less likely to have the internet at home or, if you do have it, you are less likely to use it. Ofcom uses a triple lens of access, ability and affordability through which we can look at barriers to inclusion.

No longer just a nice-to-have, digital inclusion is increasingly vital for social and economic outcomes and someone’s ability to fully benefit from and engage with many aspects of society, including access to information, services, jobs, healthcare and social connections.

Internet use among people aged 65 and over is not keeping up with their increased access to the internet

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What does the chart show?

The proportion of people aged 55 to 64 who don’t use the internet at home fell by four percentage points (from 12% to 8%) between 2023 and 2024.
The proportion of people aged 65 and over who don’t use the internet at home only fell by two percentage points (from 31% to 29%). This is because although the proportion of people in this age group who don’t have access to the internet at home fell by six percentage points (from 25% to 19%) the proportion who do have access to the internet at home but don’t use it increased by four percentage points (from 6% to 10%). This suggests that it is not just access that is limiting this age group’s use of the internet, but also factors such as digital skills and literacy, or access to devices.

We also know that:

Among people aged 65 and over, 2.3 million do not use the internet at all and 4.7 million do not have the skills to use the internet safely.
Despite increased internet use among older people, there are signs that age will continue to be a factor in digital exclusion. Although 56% of people of all ages say they will be able to adapt to new technology when they are ‘old’, this percentage is lower (46%) among people aged over 50. And among people aged over 50 there are gaps by financial status and educational attainment: among people living comfortably, 58% said they will be able to adapt to new technology compared with only 34% of people who are finding it difficult to get by financially, while the proportion is 53% for those with a degree compared with 32% for those with no qualifications (see our technical report for more details).
To stay digitally included as they age, people need opportunities and support to maintain and develop their skills. Two in five people (43%) aged 70 to 79 think they need to develop their digital skills, with a preference for learning from family members.
Almost half (49%) of people who are offline have difficulty engaging with organisations, with a third (33%) of people having difficulty dealing with local council and government services.

What we heard from older people:

The digitisation of services that people rely on is a concern for many of the older people we spoke to in Middlesbrough and Knowsley. The need to use online services for GP appointments is something they find particularly difficult. As a result, they feel that older people are being excluded from services and ignored by service providers.

In terms of older people being excluded from some GP services... the digital age has made some older people invisible.

Woman in her seventies, Knowsley

I've got three grandkids... [with my phone] they say, ‘Give it here, grandad, I’ll put it right’ and I say, ‘Show me, because if you don't show me, I won’t remember... I don’t want you to do it for me, I want to learn'.

Man in his seventies, Middlesbrough

Summary: The State of Ageing 2025

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