Can the internet reduce the loneliness of 50+ living alone?

Published online: 12 May 2020Living alone has been indicated as a key variable to explain loneliness in older adults. In contemporary society, where technology has become one of the main means of communication and personal interaction, has the internet influenced the relationship between living alone and loneliness? This paper aims to answer this research question by using a sample of 64,297 individuals who were surveyed in SHARE project wave 6 – in European countries with different welfare regimes (Portugal, Greece, Italy and Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Poland, Czech Republic; Slovenia, Estonia, and Croatia). The results of the regression analysis evidence the moderating role of the internet on the relationship between living alone and feelings of loneliness in individuals aged 50 and over, so that the impact of living alone on loneliness is diminished for internet users as compared to their peers who do not use the internet. The results therefore reinforce the importance of policies aimed at fostering e-inclusion as a way of reducing the loneliness of older adultsThis work was supported by European Commission; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia; U.S National Institute on Aging; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian; German Ministry of Education and Researc

Intra-household Allocation of Time to Household Production Activities: Evidence from Swedish Household Data

The purpose of this paper is to study the intra-household allocation of time to different household production activities using Swedish cross-sectional household data. The Tobit model is rejected in favor of the Cragg model, suggesting that an empirical model has to take into consideration that allocation of time within the household is determined by two separate processes. Moreover, the results indicate that valuable information concerning the intra-household allocation of time may be missing when household production is defined as the sum of different household activities, but there is no indication that statistically significant effects are wiped out in an aggregated analysis. Copyright 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation 2007 CEIS, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishing Ltd..

ON THE WEALTH DYNAMICS OF SWEDISH FAMILIES, 1984-98

This paper focuses on three issues. First, it analyzes the increasing inequality of wealth in Sweden in terms of percentile age and birth cohort differences, and finds very weak evidence of life-cycle savings. There are rather strong birth cohort differences in wealth accumulation. Second, it is shown that bequests and inter vivo gifts contribute to the age and cohort differences in wealth, but do not increase the inequality of wealth. The third theme is mobility of wealth as a function of bequests, age, period, length of the transition period, and the magnitude of quantile differences. Copyright 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.