We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 17274
September 2024
Evidence on the Robustness of the Links between Social Relationships and Mortality

Despite a substantial literature on the links between social relationships and mortality, the size of the relative risks from loneliness, social isolation, and living alone, remain controversial. Further research is therefore important given demographic changes meaning that more people are living alone, for longer, and with chronic health conditions. Using 19 waves of high-quality Australian longitudinal data we provide new evidence using multiple measures of social relationships, model specifications, and adjustments for confounding. We focus on chronic measures of (poor) social relationships and provide separate estimates by gender. We find that both functional and structural aspects of social relationships are independently strongly associated with all-cause mortality. We estimate a hazard ratio for loneliness of 1.41, which is greater for males (1.55) than females (1.24). These hazard ratios are larger than found for social isolation (1.19). We also find a strong relationship between being an active member of a club and reduced mortality risk, but no evidence that living alone is an independent risk factor. We provide useful comparisons with the mortality risks associated with smoking and household income. Overall, our findings suggest that interventions should focus on reducing both loneliness and social isolation, as well as encouraging active social participation.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)