Loneliness amongst older people in Europe: a comparative study of welfare regimes

Abstract

Previous research implies that the extent of welfare state regime provision plays an important indirect role in the prevalence of loneliness in later life. The aim of this study was therefore to assess the association between quality of living conditions and level of social integration indictors and the absence of loneliness in five different welfare regimes. By incorporating welfare state regimes as a proxy for societal-level features, we expanded the micro-level model of loneliness suggesting that besides individual characteristics, welfare state characteristics are also important protective factors against loneliness. The data source was from the European Social Survey, ESS round 7, 2014, from which we analysed 11,389 individuals aged 60 and over from 20 countries. The association between quality of living conditions, level of social integration variables and the absence of loneliness was analysed using multivariate logistical regression treating the welfare regime variable as a fixed effect. Our study revealed that absence of loneliness was strongly associated with individual characteristics of older adults, including self-rated health, household size, feeling of safety, marital status, frequency of being social as well as number of confidants. Further, the Nordic as well as Anglo-Saxon and Continental welfare regimes performed better than the Southern and Eastern regimes when it came to absence of loneliness. The interaction terms in our final analyses showed that the association between welfare state regimes and absence of loneliness was not independent of the included background variables and the influence of the variables varied across different social protection systems. We conclude that the understanding of loneliness is linked to the social policy systems of particular countries.

Social Exclusion and Subjective Well-being Among Older Adults in Europe: Findings From the European Social Survey

“…Results showed that social relations were the most important predictor of happiness in Southern nations, and were also significantly related to perceived health in Western and Central and Eastern European nations. Sufficient empirical evidence exists to show the impact of positive social interaction and support on health and quality of life among older adults (e.g., Andrews & Withey, 2012 ; Huxhold et al, 2013 ; Netuveli et al, 2006 ; Nyqvist et al, 2019 ). However, this may not always the case.…”

“… Samuel and Hadjar (2016) argued that advanced and larger welfare states (e.g., social-democratic welfare-state) help facilitate more equitable distribution of well-being in aging populations. It is also often observed that older adults’ isolation is significantly related to different cultural norms and welfare regimes; prevalence of loneliness in older adults is significantly higher in Southern and Eastern Europe compared to their counterparts in Western and Northern Europe ( Hansen & Slagsvold, 2016 ; Nyqvist et al, 2019 ). All of this suggests that a significant difference would exist in the association of social exclusion and subjective well-being in European older adults.…”

A systematic review of longitudinal risk factors for loneliness in older adults

“…Similarly, while three articles in our review analysed living in, or entry to, residential care, no articles considered social care more broadly, such as the receipt of home help, day care, respite care etc. Cross-sectional research has found that older adults in receipt of social care have higher levels of social loneliness (Dahlberg & McKee, 2014), while cross-country comparisons suggest that welfare states can enable social participation and reduce loneliness (Nyqvist, Nygard, & Scharf, 2019) and that differences regarding, e.g. material deprivation and lack of access to health care are associated with differences in loneliness (Morgan et al, 2021).…”

Social Network and Risk of Poor Sleep Outcomes in Older Adults: Results from a Spanish Prospective Cohort Study

“…27,28 Some studies have also shown that older adults from more individualistic societies 29 and societies with better welfare regimes like those in Northern and Central Europe, are less likely to suffer from loneliness and its consequences than those in more collectivistic cultures with lower levels of social protection in Southern and Eastern Europe. 30 Also, when compared to older adults from other European regions, the Spanish elderly have longer nighttime sleep, shorter daytime naps, and later bed and wake up times. 31 Given these particularities, we aimed to evaluate whether social network was prospectively associated with changes in sleep quality and sleep duration over time in community-dwelling older adults in Spain.…”