14 November 2023
What the Gallup Loneliness Figures Do Not Cost Out
Gallup's finding that 27% of 19-to-29-year-olds worldwide feel lonely is the best-measured figure in the field. What it costs economies and health systems is far less settled.
Research
Reviews, analysis and briefs
Everything the Center has published, most recent first. 257 items.
2023
12 November 2023
Social Prescribing Has Adoption. Does It Have Evidence?
Social prescribing has become a default policy response to loneliness in the UK and elsewhere. The intervention literature it rests on is thinner than its adoption suggests.
30 October 2023
What Governments Count When They Count Isolation
Policy responses to loneliness rely on two very different kinds of measurement: what people say about their feelings, and structural counts of who lives alone or lacks contact. The two do not track each other cleanly.
27 October 2023
One Question, Five Numbers: What Loneliness Surveys Actually Ask
National loneliness estimates range from 24% to 61% depending on the instrument used, not the underlying reality. A comparison of what five major surveys actually asked.
8 October 2023
What Would a Null Result Look Like Here
The literature linking social isolation and loneliness to worse health in older adults is almost uniformly positive. What a genuine null finding would require, and why one has not yet appeared.
5 October 2023
The Fifteen-Cigarettes Claim: Where It Comes From and Whether It Has Been Replicated
The comparison between loneliness and smoking fifteen cigarettes a day traces to a single 2010 meta-analysis and has been repeated, not independently replicated, in every major report since.
29 September 2023
How '61% of Young Adults Are Lonely' Became a Policy Fact
A single Harvard survey figure on loneliness among 18-25-year-olds has moved from a February 2021 report into the U.S. Surgeon General's advisory with little scrutiny of what the underlying instrument actually measured.
18 September 2023
Isolation and Loneliness Are Not the Same Risk Factor
A review of the mortality and cardiovascular literature finds isolation and loneliness measured, and reported, as though they were interchangeable, despite consistent evidence that they predict outcomes independently.
17 September 2023
The Evidence Behind 'Screen and Refer': What Supports the Push to Treat Isolation with Technology
A specific clinical recommendation -- screen older patients for isolation, then refer them to technology-mediated connection -- rests on strong mortality data and almost no intervention evidence.
5 September 2023
The Overlooked Age Finding in the Mortality Literature
A 2015 meta-analysis found social isolation and loneliness predicted mortality more strongly in samples under 65 than in older ones -- a result that sits awkwardly next to a decade of older-adult-focused policy.
4 September 2023
How Large Is the Loneliness Effect, Actually
Several major studies report social disconnection as a mortality risk factor, but the effect sizes vary by a factor of nearly two depending on what was measured and how. A look at what the numbers themselves say.
24 August 2023
One Instrument, Four Numbers: What the UCLA Loneliness Scale Does and Does Not Measure in Young Adults
Prevalence estimates for loneliness among young adults range from 36% to 73% across recent surveys. The gap traces less to a real difference in experience than to which instrument was used, and what that instrument assumes loneliness is.
21 August 2023
The Surgeon General's Advisory and the Gap It Names in Its Own Evidence
The 2023 U.S. Surgeon General advisory names its own central research gap plainly: cardiovascular associations with isolation are well established, but intervention evidence is thin. What that admission means for older-adult policy.
13 August 2023
Half of Adults or Sixty-One Percent? Two Loneliness Surveys, Two Different Numbers
Cigna's 2020 workplace survey put U.S. loneliness at 61%. The Surgeon General's 2023 advisory cites roughly half. The gap traces to what was measured, whom, and when.
31 July 2023
Does Social Isolation Cause Cardiovascular Disease, or Just Predict It
The American Heart Association's 2022 statement puts isolation and loneliness at roughly a 30% increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or death. What kind of evidence would show the mechanism is causal rather than confounded.
16 July 2023
The Research Gap That Every Loneliness Review Keeps Naming
Across a decade of reviews and one Surgeon General advisory, researchers agree that isolation and loneliness predict poor health. None can yet say which interventions reduce that risk, and the gap has persisted long enough to shape policy anyway.
22 June 2023
Three Explanations for Youth Loneliness, and Which One Gets Funded
National strategies aimed at loneliness treat young adults as the highest-risk group, but the policies they fund assume a cause the evidence has not isolated.
16 June 2023
The Cost of Loneliness Is Not Yet a Number
Cost-of-loneliness estimates require a prevalence base, an attributable risk, a unit cost, and a counterfactual. The published evidence supports the second reasonably well and the other three barely at all.
10 June 2023
Does Loneliness Really Match Smoking 15 Cigarettes a Day
The comparison between loneliness and smoking, now repeated in a Surgeon General advisory, traces back to a single 2010 meta-analysis. What that study measured, and what it did not, is worth separating from the number itself.
6 June 2023
The Same Gap, Five Reports Later
Five major reviews since 2020 have converged on the same finding: governments are building loneliness policy on strong association evidence and almost no intervention evidence, technology-based approaches included.
28 May 2023
What Sampling Frame Sits Behind 'Half of Americans Are Lonely'
The Surgeon General's advisory and other widely cited loneliness estimates rest on different sampling frames and instruments. A close look at what each survey actually measured, and in whom.
8 May 2023
Social Prescribing and the Limits of the Surgeon General's Advisory
The May 2 advisory rests on an unusually strong body of observational risk evidence and an unusually thin body of intervention evidence. That asymmetry matters most for the one policy instrument a health system would actually deploy.
3 May 2023
What Does 'One in Three Older Adults Are Lonely' Actually Measure
Headline prevalence figures for loneliness and isolation among older adults come from different instruments measuring different things. A close look at what each one actually asked.
2 May 2023
Isolation and Loneliness Are Not the Same Policy Problem
Government strategies and clinical guidance on social disconnection routinely treat isolation and loneliness as one thing to be measured and fixed together, despite evidence that they carry different risks and require different responses.