Guernsey · Quality of life
Is government improving the measurable quality of life of islanders?
16 indicators, each tagged by the kind of evidence behind it. Where the honest answer is that nobody measures it, that is what this page prints.
The picture splits.Three measures moved the right way. Loneliness fell to 16.9% in 2023 from 18.6% in 2018. The share of people saying cost had not stopped them using a health service rose 5.7 points to 58.4% since 2018. Avoidable mortality fell to 158 per 100,000 in 2022–24 from 186 in 2019–21, although the report itself cautions that the confidence intervals are too wide to call that fall real.
Four moved the other way. Real median household income was down 10.0% in 2022 against 2017. Housing took 30.5% of net income in 2022, up from 24.3% in 2018. Relative poverty was 18.9% in 2022, against a low of 16.5% in 2019. The share of the population without secure housing rose from 1.2% in 2016 to 1.9% in 2023.
And some cannot be answered at all. There is no official food-bank statistic. No population figure has been published since December 2023. Every figure on this page is dated by its reference period, not by the year of the publication that carried it, which is why several of them are older than they look.
Social
Poverty, housing insecurity and connection
Three of these five have a comparator to measure against. Loneliness improved. Poverty and homelessness did not.
Relative poverty
18.9%
2022, annual series from 2014
Below 60% of median income after housing costs. A nine-point annual run: 22.3% in 2014, a low of 16.5% in 2019, rising since. The threshold was £22,318.
Next edition suspended, no announced date.
Food insecurity
13.9%
2023, first wave, no back-series
Hit one or more food-insecurity indicators in six months, 5.7% within a month. 27.9% of 25 to 34s against 2.9% of over-75s, and 19.0% in affordable housing against 2.2% of owner-occupiers.
Food-bank usage
No official statistic
charity figures only, four incompatible units
714 households and 68 families a week in 2025, via a funder’s annual review. Separately, 3,190 requests for help in 2023 against 2,474 in 2022, via the local press.
Units shift between sources, from requests to people to visits to households. A one-visit-per-month cap means every figure understates need by construction.
Homelessness
1.9%
2023, annual series from 2016
Population without secure housing, up from 1.2% in 2016. An official indicator, built in response to the 2022 Community Foundation report. The waiting list reached 384 households at end-2024, up from 264 in 2019.
No net additional affordable units were created during 2025.
Loneliness
16.9%
2023, against 18.6% in 2018
Lonely often or all the time, a statistically significant fall. But intense social loneliness among over-75s rose 10.6 points, from 16.9% to 27.5%.