Silver empowerment. A quantitative picture of loneliness among elderly in Belgium and Europe

Loneliness has an enormous impact on the quality of life of elderly. It can be defined as the unpleasant feeling that occurs when a person’s network of social relationships is experienced to be deficient in some important way, either quantitatively or qualitatively. Based on the analysis of the most recent data of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we present a broad quantitative picture of loneliness in Belgium and Europe. We find that 22% of the Belgian elderly and …

Loneliness has an enormous impact on the quality of life of elderly. It can be defined as the unpleasant feeling that occurs when a person’s network of social relationships is experienced to be deficient in some important way, either quantitatively or qualitatively. Based on the analysis of the most recent data of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we present a broad quantitative picture of loneliness in Belgium and Europe. We find that 22% of the Belgian elderly and 27% of the European elderly (65+ years) feel lonely in 2017. Moreover, loneliness is distributed unequally among different groups of elderly. While in Belgium, loneliness is related to age, household size, depression, cognitive functioning, network size and network satisfaction, on the European level we can complete this list by immigrant generation, geographical region, having children, self-perceived health, mobility limitations and the number of activities . Hence, if we want to tackle loneliness among elderly in Belgium and Europe, we need to take these domains into consideration.