The Many Faces of Isolation: Living Alone, Loneliness and Social Connections Across the Life Course

Abstract

The rise in living alone has been one of the major demographic shifts in recent decades across societies. Concurrently, the media started talking about a ‘loneliness epidemic’ and an increase in social isolation, with smaller networks and less social interaction. These trends could be exacerbated in the future by the demographic processes (i.e., decreasing fertility, increasing life expectancy, and population ageing) that high-income countries are facing. Yet to date, the existing literature hasn’t provided a comprehensive investigation of the interconnections between living alone, loneliness, and social isolation. Evidence on the relationship between isolation trajectories and physical and mental health across the life-course is missing. This lecture presents the project SOLO (financed by FIS3, FIS-2024-06527), which has the aim to: 1) systematically analyze past trends and model future projections of living alone, loneliness, and social isolation in post-industrial contemporary societies in Europe and the United States across all age groups; 2) study the dependencies between living alone, loneliness, and social isolation; and 3) investigate the association between isolation trajectories and physical and mental health outcomes across the life-course.