Loneliness and health problems: the impact of socio-economic context and culture

The study examines the relationship between loneliness and of health and analyzes the societal conditions that influence its strength. Scientific literature shows that the feeling of loneliness is associated with stressful effects on the organism, which negatively affect health. At the same time, the question of what factors of the social context can enhance this effect of loneliness on health remains poorly understood. In order to clarify it, a two-level linear modeling was performed using survey data from the International Social Research Program (ISSP 2017), which includes 29 countries from various regions of the world, including Russia, as well as comparative statistics and analytics on the socio-economic development of these countries, their culture and demographic structure. The results show that loneliness is indeed negatively associated with self-rated health, and this relationship is more pronounced in some countries than in others. The societal conditions contributing to its strength include the level of economic and social development of countries, their culture and age structure. With increasing well-being and social security, people's assessments of their health increase, and this increase is less noticeable among those who feel lonely, as a result of which socio-economic development leads to a more pronounced impact of loneliness on health. It turned out to be more pronounced in countries with a higher proportion of the elderly population. With a similar economic development, the negative impact of loneliness on self-rated health of individuals was more noticeable in collectivist societies than in individualist ones.