Loneliness and health among the elderly.The role of cultural heritage and relationship quality

Elizabeth Casabianca () and Matija Kovacic ()
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Matija Kovacic: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice; Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ivrea

No 2022:01, Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari"

Abstract: We estimate the direct causal effect of loneliness on a variety of health outcomes using a sample of second-generation immigrants drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. In an effort to account for the endogeneity of self-declared loneliness, we explore the link between loneliness and a specific cultural trait strongly associated with quality of relations and use maternal cultural background as an instrument for loneliness. We thus also assess the importance of cultural heritage in shaping individuals' perceptions of loneliness. Additionally, we investigate one pathway by which some specific ancestral factors may influence the formation of cultural traits in the modern era. Our results suggest that loneliness has a significant impact on health, both mental and physical. Notably, our identification strategy allows us to uncover a more severe effect of loneliness on health than that found in an OLS setting. These findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks.

JEL-codes: D91 I12 I14 J14 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-cul, nep-eur and nep-soc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ven:wpaper:2022:01

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