Lonely Times? Living Alone and Loneliness among UK Adults during Covid-19

Maria Sironi, University College London
Jenny Chanfreau, University of Sussex
Afshin Zilanawala, University of Southampton

The increase in living alone has been one of the major demographic shifts of recent decades. Concurrently, there has been an alarming media coverage of a ‘loneliness epidemic’ as a serious public health concern affecting people’s health. However, the common conflation of loneliness, social isolation and living alone hampers our understanding of the implications of this major demographic trend. The physical distancing measures in the UK in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic provide a context in which we can study the role of living alone on loneliness without the confounding effect of different levels of social connectedness. The period of social restriction and quarantining may have contributed to feelings of loneliness differently for those living alone and those sharing a household with others. We investigate the association between living alone and loneliness using the COVID-19 surveys of three largescale nationally representative British cohort studies, and we study the role of economic activity, family relationships and interpersonal social support during the pandemic in explaining this association. Results indicate that those consistently living alone throughout the pandemic, compared to those who never lived alone, report a higher risk of lack of companionship, and of feeling isolated, left out, and lonely.

Keywords: Population, Shocks and Pandemics, Health and Morbidity, Families, Unions and Households

See paper.