ArticleZeitschrift fur Gerontologie und Geriatrie2021
Social relationships, living arrangements and loneliness.
Article in Zeitschrift fur Gerontologie und Geriatrie, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Aging trends, challenges, and policy framework within the Ghanaian context: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2026Pooled it
- "Loneliness is a sad disease": oldest old adults' empirical definition of loneliness and social isolation from a mixed-method study in Northern Italy.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Family characteristics and loneliness among older adults: evidence from the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brazil).Revista brasileira de epidemiologia = Brazilian journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- The NRW80+ study: conceptual background and study groups.Zeitschrift fur Gerontologie und Geriatrie · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOldest-old people are expected to be particularly likely to experience loneliness due to the loss of their intimate partner or of same-aged social network members. It is assumed that individuals in different living arrangements maintain different kinds of social networks because they adjust their networks to their specific needs. However, not much is known about the variation in the social networks of the oldest-old depending on their living arrangements and how this variation is related to loneliness. This is the first study that seeks to fill this research gap by examining how the composition and the size of a social network varies among the oldest-old depending on their living arrangements with a partner (coresidential partnership, living apart together (LAT) partnership, no partnership), and how this variation contributes to explain loneliness among the oldest-old.
methodsWe used cross-sectional data from the representative survey NRW80+ (Quality of Life and Well-Being of the Very Old in North-Rhine Westphalia). The sample of analysis used in this study consists of 1860 respondents from the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia aged 80 years and older. Associations between social network characteristics and living arrangements were tested using χ
resultsRespondents in a coresidential partnership maintained larger social networks than those in an LAT partnership and those with no intimate partner. Furthermore, the respondents with no partner maintained more diverse social networks. Compared to those in the other living arrangements, the respondents in an LAT partnership maintained the smallest and least diverse social networks. Being in a coresidential partnership and the social network size were found to be negatively associated with loneliness.
conclusionFirst, the results indicate that respondents who do not have a partner adjusted their social networks to meet their needs in the absence of this relationship. Second, we conclude that being in a coresidential partnership and having a large social network protects the oldest-old against loneliness.
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