The Effects of Neighbourhoods on Size of Social Network of the Elderly and Loneliness: A Multilevel Approach

Abstract

Our goal was to find out how much influence neighbourhoods have on the size of the social network and loneliness of elderly people. The results show that the average size of the social network was 9, while the elderly had few feelings of loneliness. Neighbourhoods could at most explain 8 per cent of the size of social network and 6 per cent of loneliness. It is concluded that the elderly mostly have substantially sized social networks and few feelings of loneliness. Social networks and loneliness are probably more strongly related to the (psychological or social) characteristics of individuals and are hardly influenced by the characteristics of neighbourhoods.