Living Alone and Subjective Well-Being during the Covid-19 Pandemic across Four British Cohorts

Maria Sironi , University College London
Jenny Chanfreau, University College London (UCL)
Afshin Zilanawala, University of Southampton

The increase in solo living has been one of the major demographic shifts of recent decades. However, the common conflation of loneliness, isolation and solo living hampers our understanding of the effects of this major demographic trend. People who live alone might be very socially active outside of the household and not feel lonely. The physical distancing measures in the UK in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic provide a case study for disentangling these concepts and provide insight to the wellbeing of individuals living alone. Whereas the lockdown measures were imposed on all households, the social isolation effect of this policy was much greater for individuals who were living alone and unable to socialise with other household members. We investigate the association between living alone and different measures of subjective well-being and loneliness using the COVID-19 Surveys of four largescale nationally representative British cohort studies. The main contribution lies in isolating the role of solo living in affecting levels of loneliness, by exploiting COVID-19 as a mechanism that prevented physical social interactions. Results indicate that those consistently living alone throughout the pandemic, compared to those who never live alone, report lower levels of subjective well-being and are at higher risk of feeling lonely.

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 Presented in Session 19. Trajectories of Singlehood