Loneliness and Social Isolation: An Unequally Shared Burden in Europe

Béatrice d'Hombres, Martina Barjaková and Sylke Schnepf
Additional contact information
Martina Barjaková: Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin

No 14245, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Concerns about loneliness and social isolation are growing more than ever. With the COVID-19 pandemic entering its second year, there are fears that the toll on loneliness could have consequences long after the virus recedes. This study offers a comparative overview of the incidence and determinants of loneliness and social isolation in Europe in the pre-COVID-19 period. The empirical results indicate that 8.6% of the adult population in Europe suffer from frequent loneliness and 20.8% from social isolation, with eastern Europe recording the highest prevalence of both phenomena. Trends over time do not indicate any change in the incidence of social isolation following the widespread adoption of social media networks from 2010 onwards. The empirical analysis shows that favourable economic circumstances protect against loneliness and social isolation, while living alone and poor health constitute important loneliness risk factors. Although social isolation increases with age, the elderly do not report more frequent feelings of loneliness than other age groups, all other things being equal. The relative contributions of the different objective circumstances included in the empirical analysis — demographic characteristics, economic conditions, living arrangements, health status, religious beliefs and geographical location — to chronic loneliness and social isolation vary substantially.

Keywords: risk factors; social isolation; loneliness; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 I12 I14 I18 I30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14245.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14245

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().