Loneliness Among Older Adults in Latin America, China, and India: Prevalence, Correlates and Association With Mortality

Objectives This study was designed to explore prevalence and correlates of self-reported loneliness and to investigate whether loneliness predicts mortality in Latin America, China and India. Methods The study investigated population-based cross-sectional (2003-2007) and longitudinal surveys (follow-up 2007-2010) from the 10/66 Dementia Research Group project. Poisson regression and Cox regression analyses were conducted to analyse correlates of loneliness and its association with mortality. Results The standardised prevalence of loneliness varied between 25.3% and 32.4% in Latin America and was 18.3% in India. China showed a low prevalence of loneliness (3.8%). In pooled meta-analyses, there was robust evidence to support an association between loneliness and mortality across Latin American countries (HR=1.13, 95% CI 1.01-1.26, I2=10.1%) and China (HR=1.58, 95% CI 1.03-2.41), but there were no associations in India. Conclusions Our findings suggest potential cultural variances may exist in the concept of loneliness in older age. The effect of loneliness upon mortality is consistent across different cultural settings excluding India. Loneliness should therefore be considered as a potential dimension of public health among older populations.