Depression and loneliness of older adults in Europe and Israel after the first wave of covid-19

Josefine Atzendorf () and Stefan Gruber
Additional contact information
Josefine Atzendorf: Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA)
Stefan Gruber: Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA)

European Journal of Ageing, 2022, vol. 19, issue 4, No 6, 849-861

Abstract: Abstract Epidemic control measures that aim to introduce social distancing help to decelerate the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, their consequences in terms of mental well-being might be negative, especially for older adults. While existing studies mainly focus on the time during the first lockdown, we look at the weeks afterward in order to measure the medium-term consequences of the first wave of the pandemic. Using data from the SHARE Corona Survey, we include retired respondents aged 60 and above from 25 European countries plus Israel. Combining SHARE data with macro-data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker allows us to include macro-indicators at the country level, namely the number of deaths per 100,000 and the number of days with stringent epidemic control measures, in addition to individual characteristics. The findings show that both macro-indicators are influential for increased feelings of sadness/depression, but that individual factors are crucial for explaining increased feelings of loneliness in the time after the first lockdown. Models with interaction terms reveal that the included macro-indicators have negative well-being consequences, particularly for the oldest survey participants. Additionally, the results reveal that especially those living alone had a higher risk for increased loneliness in the time after the first COVID-19 wave.

Keywords: Loneliness; Sadness/depression; Covid-19; Cross-country comparison; Multilevel analysis; SHARE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10433-021-00640-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:eujoag:v:19:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s10433-021-00640-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... iences/journal/10433

DOI: 10.1007/s10433-021-00640-8

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Ageing is currently edited by Marja Aartsen, Susanne Iwarsson and Prof. Dr. Matthias Kliegel

More articles in European Journal of Ageing from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().