Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Loneliness is an increasing concern, particularly among older adults. Loneliness may affect elderly’s health status and well-being, and can thus affect the society with an increased level of public spending through more pressure on health care services. Therefore, it is important to be aware of potential risk groups, and to effectively design policies and interventions aimed at preventing loneliness. This paper aims to examine whether cultural traits are associated with being in a risk group, specifically we examine if individualism associates with self-perceived loneliness. To examine this research aim, we use an epidemiological approach with data on country and individual-level, that enables us to isolate cultural heritage from the institutional context in the country of residence. An OLS-regression is conducted, based on Hofstede's individualism dimension and loneliness experienced by older first and second-generation immigrants in Europe, using data from the “Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe” (SHARE). The results show a negative association between individualism and loneliness when focusing on older adults post retirement age (≥61 years). An increased level of individualism by 10 units does on average reduce the probability of experiencing loneliness by 0.72 percentage points. This may be explained by how expectations on social relationships vary between cultures. However, the findings are sensitive when only considering second-generation immigrants which may be due to diminishing cultural transmission over generations, and low statistical power. Although the magnitude is relatively modest, in comparison to the mean value of loneliness in the sample, it indicates that an individual with a cultural heritage from an individualistic country experiences loneliness to a lesser extent than an individual from a collectivistic country. This highlights the importance of identifying potential risk groups that may occur due to cultural factors, in order to prevent loneliness and to design policy interventions to effectively allocate public spending.
Authors: Walfridson, Ebba, Holst, Ellen
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: European Commission
OpenAlex ID: W7221838739