Loneliness across the life course

The research project, led by Dr Praveetha Patalay at University College London, aims to examine the links between social isolation, loneliness and wellbeing. It looks at different cohorts, following the lives of people born in 1946, 1958, 1970, 1989-90 and 2000-01.

The work is a secondary data analysis initiative (SDAI) which uses data from five British longitudinal cohort studies. It will look at whether levels of social connectedness and loneliness, and their relationship to subjective wellbeing, change over people’s lives. They will also investigate whether these patterns vary between generations.

Despite an increase in policy interest, there is little evidence documenting the associations between social isolation, loneliness and subjective wellbeing across our lives and between generations. This research project aims to address this gap, while also generating a range of comparable ‘harmonised’ measures of social isolation for future research.