Context Matters: Internet Usage and Loneliness Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Objectives: Later life is often categorized by higher-than-average levels of loneliness, but individual differences are vast and not well understood. Emerging evidence indicates that broad-based contextual factors such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic-and the use of the internet throughout-are differentially associated with the experience of loneliness. We, therefore, target internet usage and loneliness among middle-aged and older adults during the pandemic and examine the moderating role of age, gender, and limiting illness therein.

Changes in well-being among socially isolated older people during the COVID-19 pandemic: An outcome-wide analysis.

Older adults experienced major changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions, and it might be expected that those who were already socially isolated before the pandemic were particularly vulnerable. We apply an outcome-wide longitudinal design on 4,636 participants (mean age 66.8 y) from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, observed in 2018/19 and early (June/July 2020) and later (November/December 2020) in the pandemic.

Changes in retirement plans in the English older population during the COVID-19 pandemic: The roles of health factors and financial insecurity.

Over the course of 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted lives globally. In the UK, unemployment rate continued to increase during and post-lockdown periods, and job security and financial wellbeing deteriorated. It is important to understand whether individual decisions related to retirement plans have changed systematically as a result of the pandemic, especially among older adults who experienced greater rates of pandemic unemployment.

Changes in Internet use patterns among older adults in England from before to after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about an increased reliance on the Internet for various daily activities. Given the known digital divide, it is important to understand whether older adults changed their Internet use patterns, but current evidence is limited to cross-sectional studies. This study documents changes in frequency and types of Internet use among older adults from before to shortly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (2018/2019 to June/July 2020), and the factors predicting regular use during these early days of the pandemic.

COVID-19 lockdowns and changes in loneliness among young people in the U.K.

Rationale: There has been growing concern that loneliness has increased throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns, and that the burden has fallen heavily on young people. This is important because loneliness is strongly linked to worse health outcomes.

Objective: We examine whether and how loneliness among young people changed during the pandemic across the different lockdown periods in 2020 and 2021.

Internet use and psychological wellbeing among older adults in England: a difference-in-differences analysis over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Longitudinal evidence on how Internet use affects the psychological wellbeing of older adults has been mixed. As policymakers invest in efforts to reduce the digital divide, it is important to have robust evidence on whether encouraging Internet use among older adults is beneficial, or potentially detrimental, to their wellbeing.

Methods: We observe depressive symptoms and loneliness of adults aged 50 + in the nationally representative English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, from before (2018/19) to during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (June/July and November/December 2020).

Economic gradients in loneliness, social isolation and social support: Evidence from the UK Biobank.

Despite the substantial literature on how loneliness is associated with poor health and premature mortality, there is little detailed research on the extent of its economic gradients. We provide this evidence using a sample of around 400,000 respondents aged 40-70 years from the UK Biobank, who were assessed between 2006 and 2010. We focus on differences in loneliness, as well as social isolation and a lack of social support, across educational attainment, household income, local area deprivation, and recent experience of financial stress.

Social Isolation, Social Support, and Loneliness Profiles Before and After Spousal Death and the Buffering Role of Financial Resources.

Objectives: We provide new evidence on the profiles of social isolation, social support, and loneliness before and after spousal death for older widows. We also examine the moderating effects of gender and financial resources on changes in social health before and after widowhood.

Methods: We use 19 waves of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, including 749 widowed individuals and a comparison group of around 8,000 married individuals.

Who is resilient in a time of crisis? The importance of financial and non-financial resources.

Enhancing population resilience to adverse events is now a policy priority. Accordingly, there have been calls for more evidence on the determinants of resilience. We answer this call by identifying financial and non-financial resources associated with psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Economic Aspects of Loneliness in Australia.

We highlight the problem of loneliness, and argue that it is not only a public health issue but also an economic problem. We provide a brief review of findings from the key literature on the associations between loneliness, mental and physical health, and healthcare costs; and then present some evidence on its trends, the extent of socioeconomic inequalities and its links with health and healthcare usage, in Australia. We hope to encourage further economics research on loneliness, and related issues of social isolation and poor social support, to aid the design of policies and interventions to reduce loneliness.

The link between health and economic preferences: Evidence from 22 OECD countries.

We study the link between health status and economic preferences using survey data from 22 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. We hypothesize that there is a relationship between poor health and the preferences that people hold, and therefore their choices and decisions. We find that individuals with a limiting health condition are more risk averse and less patient, and that this is true for physical and mental health conditions.

Health in widowhood: The roles of social capital and economic resources.

A sizeable literature has demonstrated strong negative associations between widowhood and health, but longitudinal evidence on moderating factors has been mixed. This study assesses the roles of pre-existing social capital and wealth in moderating changes in health in the event of spousal death. Samples of widowed individuals (n = 796) and matched married controls (n = 8233) are employed from 17 consecutive waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (2001-2017).

Mental health and the response to financial incentives: Evidence from a survey incentives experiment.

Although mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression are common, there is little research on whether individuals in poor mental health react differently from others to financial incentives. This paper exploits an experiment from the UK Understanding Society Innovation Panel to assess how the participation response to randomly-assigned financial incentives differs by mental health status. We find that individuals in good mental health are more likely to respond when offered a higher financial incentive, whereas those in poor mental health are indifferent to the increased incentive.

For richer, for poorer: the relationship between adolescent obesity and future household economic prosperity.

Adolescent obesity not only has serious long-term health implications, but also the potential to lead to a socioeconomic trajectory of lower earnings and household income. However, the magnitude and mechanisms of such outcomes across the life course are poorly understood. Using birth cohort data from the British National Child Development Study (1958 to 2008), we examined the relationship between adolescent obesity (at age 16) and future household income, employment, wages, marriage and spousal earnings when individuals were in their 30s, 40s and 50s.