Up and About: Older Adults’ Well-being During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Swedish Longitudinal Study

Marie Kivi, Isabelle Hansson, Pär Bjälkebring and Derek M Isaacowitz

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2021, vol. 76, issue 2, e4-e9

Abstract: ObjectivesTo investigate early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic related to (a) levels of worry, risk perception, and social distancing; (b) longitudinal effects on well-being; and (c) effects of worry, risk perception, and social distancing on well-being.MethodsWe analyzed annual changes in four aspects of well-being over 5 years (2015–2020): life satisfaction, financial satisfaction, self-rated health, and loneliness in a subsample (n = 1,071, aged 65–71) from a larger survey of Swedish older adults. The 2020 wave, collected March 26–April 2, included measures of worry, risk perception, and social distancing in response to COVID-19.Results(a) In relation to COVID-19: 44.9% worried about health, 69.5% about societal consequences, 25.1% about financial consequences; 86.4% perceived a high societal risk, 42.3% a high risk of infection, and 71.2% reported high levels of social distancing. (b) Well-being remained stable (life satisfaction and loneliness) or even increased (self-rated health and financial satisfaction) in 2020 compared to previous years. (c) More worry about health and financial consequences was related to lower scores in all four well-being measures. Higher societal worry and more social distancing were related to higher well-being.DiscussionIn the early stage of the pandemic, Swedish older adults on average rated their well-being as high as, or even higher than, previous years. However, those who worried more reported lower well-being. Our findings speak to the resilience, but also heterogeneity, among older adults during the pandemic. Further research, on a broad range of health factors and long-term psychological consequences, is needed.

Keywords: Longitudinal change; Mental health; Risk perception (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbaa084 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:geronb:v:76:y:2021:i:2:p:e4-e9.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().