Factors Associated with Direct and Indirect Aspects of Loneliness Among Europeans Aged 50 or Higher

Loneliness is considered as a major problem for individuals, especially among those in older ages. Under the scope of the present study, loneliness is viewed as a condition related to subjective emotional experiences rather than social isolation. Measurement of loneliness (in the analysis) is based on the construction of a short version of the UCLA Loneliness Scale, including the items of companionship, feeling left out and feeling isolated, which comprise indirect loneliness. Nevertheless, the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) includes, apart from the above-mentioned items, a direct over-all item reflecting self-assessment of loneliness. The purpose of this study is to estimate predictors of loneliness covering different domains of life that affect both the three indirect items of loneliness scale and the fourth direct item, separately. The analysis uses data from the sixth wave of the survey, conducted in 2015, including 64,670 respondents. The method of analysis involves application of gologit2 routine models (Stata, version 13). Gologit2 is a procedure that estimates generalized logistic regression models for ordinal dependent variables. Results indicated that health factors including physical activities measured by the GALI indicator and poor cognitive performances considering poor memory, reading skills and orientation in time have a strong association with most loneliness items. Further, increasing age seems to be related of higher chances of feeling lonely, left out and lack of companionship whereas having more children has the opposite effect. Contrary to our expectation, educational attainment does not exhibit a protective effect whereas greater life satisfaction and better socioeconomic status are associated with lower chances of experiencing all aspects of loneliness.