Recently, rising numbers of mid-life and older adults are starting a “living apart together” (LAT) relationship following divorce or widowhood. LAT describes an intimate relationship wherein partners maintain separate households. This study investigated the characteristics of care arrangements in older long-term LAT couples and elicited personal comments about intra-couple care. We interviewed 25 LAT partners and a comparison group of 17 remarried older adults in the Netherlands in a side study of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study. Results showed that about half of the LAT partners intended to exchange care if needed (partnership commitment); the other half had ambiguous feelings or intentions to refuse care (independence orientation). However, for those LAT partners already confronted with illness in their current relationship, all provided care to the partner in need. The minority of LAT partners who would not exchange care reciprocally are more likely to give as opposed to receive care.

The purpose of this study was to determine the key determinants of loneliness of older Canadians. We drew on the assumptions concerning the importance of person-environment fit to test the relative importance of personal characteristics, deprived living conditions, social network/social engagement, and satisfaction in explaining loneliness. Data comprised a sample of 3,799 respondents over age 65 drawn from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey, Cycle 22. Personal characteristics, social network size and composition, and satisfaction with network contact were found to be related to loneliness, as were indicators of living in economically and socially challenging conditions. Older adults who had experienced a recent downturn in their financial situation, and who lacked the help needed to cope with a recent personal challenge, reported higher levels of loneliness. A striking feature of our findings is the relatively low scores on loneliness of older Canadians compared to older adults in other countries.

Family relationships play a major role in individuals' lives and can be a source of comfort, support and protection during the entire lifecourse. Particularly in the context of life events, such as widowhood, family relationships may be salient for (older) adults in coping with feelings of grief, loss and loneliness. Using Dutch survey data and 18 in-depth interviews from a sub-sample, this study examines the role of family relationships through the lifespan in reducing loneliness among ever-widowed older adults (i.e. persons who have at some time during their life experienced the death of a spouse). Particular attention was paid to childhood memories, family ties and support from siblings. Quantitative analyses examined associations between loneliness and childhood experiences of relationships with parents, family ties and sibling support. Qualitative data elucidated how ever-widowed adults recall relations with parents and siblings and experience current family relations. Quantitative and qualitative data showed that emotional support from siblings reduced loneliness. Additionally, positive memories of childhood relationships and current family ties were negatively related to loneliness. In times of ever-increasing longevity, work detailing how family relationships across the lifecourse are supportive in alleviating loneliness is a key issue on the social research and policy agenda.

Previous research has shown that exchanges of support within social networks reduce the loneliness of older adults. However, there is no consistent evidence on how types of support (instrumental and emotional) and the direction of that support (giving and receiving) are related to loneliness, and whether the effects are culture-specific. The aim of this study was to investigate support exchanges and their effects on loneliness in Spain and the Netherlands. We suggest that cultural differences, such as more interdependent cultural values in Southern Europe and more independence-related values in Northern Europe, influence social realities such as the social support exchanged. In Spain relationships with family members are determined by mutual obligations; older people expect to receive instrumental support from them. However, in Northern Europe independence is highly valued and intimacy and closeness are shown primarily by confiding about personal matters. This paper examined data from two comparable surveys, one in Spain (N=646) and one in the Netherlands (N=656). Older adults in Spain provide for, and receive, high amounts of instrumental support and this proved to be a protective factor against loneliness. An alternative pattern was found in the Netherlands where respondents provided more and received more emotional support than Spanish older adults; emotional support is a protective factor in the Netherlands (but only for support received).

Background: This study aims to develop and validate a Chinese translation of the 6-item De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale – a widely used instrument to measure loneliness – specifically determining its psychometric properties in community-dwelling Chinese elders in Hong Kong. The relationships between loneliness and several clinical variables are also assessed.

Method: The English version was translated into Chinese. Content validity was established by group discussion and Delphi panel. The questionnaire was administered to 103 Hong Kong Chinese community-dwelling elders. Statistical analysis was performed to test the reliability and validity of the scale.

Results: The content validity was high as shown by the results of the Delphi panel. Cronbach's α of the 6-item scale was 0.76. For the inter-rater reliability of the six items, the intra-class correlation coefficients ranged from 0.98 to 1.00. The emotional loneliness subscale significantly correlated with the social loneliness subscale (ρ = 0.37; p < 0.001). In using a direct question to measure loneliness, 21 participants (20%) reported that they were lonely. The overall loneliness scale score significantly correlated with the answers on the direct question of loneliness (rpb = 0.71; p < 0.001). The overall loneliness score showed significant correlation with Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (ρ = 0.29; p = 0.003), current smoking status (rpb = 0.24; p = 0.014), and some objective social characteristics.

Conclusion: The Chinese version of the 6-item De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale is a reliable and valid measure of loneliness in Chinese elders.

Gerontologists have emphasised that older adults are not only recipients of support but also important support providers. Using data from the first wave of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study of 727 middle-generation adults aged 45 to 79 years, we examined the associations between loneliness and giving support up, across and down family lineages. Overall, the findings were consistent more with an altruism perspective, that giving brings rewards, than with an exchange perspective, which emphasises the costs of giving support. The results showed an inverse relationship between the number of generations supported and loneliness, and that those engaged in balanced exchanges with family members in three generations (parents, siblings and children) were generally the least lonely. As regards the direction of support giving, the findings showed that the association between giving support and loneliness was insignificant if the support was for parents, negative for support to siblings, and positive for support to children. Imbalanced support exchanges were differentially associated with loneliness, and depended on the type of family relationship involved. Non-reciprocated support made parents more vulnerable to loneliness, whereas non-reciprocated giving in sibling ties was associated with low levels of loneliness. Imbalanced support giving in relationships with parents was not associated with loneliness.

This article provides an introduction to the special volume on research related to issues of social isolation and loneliness for older people. It discusses some key concepts and provides a brief overview of the articles included in the volume.

In this study, Weiss's (1973) theorizing about the sources of emotional and social loneliness is elaborated – with notions about the asymmetric gratifications derived from marriage, about the conflicting loyalties that result from remarriage, and about selection into marriage – in order to reach an understanding of gender differences in loneliness, both in and outside of marriage. First and subsequent marriages are considered, as well as marital disruptions and never marrying. The data (N = 3737) are from the 1992 Dutch survey on older adults' living arrangements and social networks (NESTOR-LSN). Marital-history differences emerge, not only for emotional loneliness, but also (and contrary to Weiss's theoretical conceptualizations) for social loneliness. The marital-history differences in emotional and social loneliness are greater among men than women. For men, the marriage bond appears not only to be more central to emotional well-being than is the case for women but also to play a pivotal role in their involvement with others. Marital history offers the best explanation for differences in emotional loneliness among men, but social embeddedness characteristics also account for differences in emotional loneliness among women. Apparently, whereas men are more likely to find an intimate attachment in marriage, women also find protection from emotional loneliness in other close ties. The marital-history differences in social loneliness are largely mediated by social embeddedness characteristics, partly in different ways for men and women. Involvement in activities outside the home serves as the context for sociability for men, whereas parenthood plays a more important role in women's social engagements.

Loneliness is experienced in many cultures. To properly assess cross-cultural differences, attention should be paid to the level, determinants, and measurement of loneliness. However, cross-cultural studies have rarely taken into account more than one of these. Differences in the level of loneliness were hypothesized on the basis of national differences in partnership, kinship, and friendship, which were assumed to be related to cultural standards within a society. Differences were examined among married and widowed older adults aged 70 to 89 years living independently in the Netherlands (N = 1,847), Tuscany, Italy (N = 562), and Manitoba, Canada (N = 1,134). Loneliness was measured with an 11-item scale. The Manitobans were high on emotional loneliness and the Tuscans were high on social loneliness. Partner status excepted, the determinants were nearly the same across the three locations. Differential item functioning (DIF) related to the three locations was observed for most items. Interactions with gender and the availability of a partner relationship were observed.

In a rapidly changing society, young adults may play an important role in teaching older adults about social, cultural and technological changes. Thus older people who lack regular contact with younger people are at risk of being excluded from contemporary social developments. But how age-segregated are older people? The level of age-segregation of older people can be studied by examining the age-composition of personal social networks. Using NESTOR-LSN survey data from The Netherlands, we are able to determine the number of younger adults that people aged 55–89 years identify as members of their social networks, and to examine the factors that are associated with segregation or integration. The findings show that there is a large deficit of young adults in the networks of older people, and that few older people have regular contact with younger non-kin. If age were not a factor in the selection of network members, one would expect the age distribution of adult network members to be the same as the age distribution of the entire adult population, but the ratio of actual to expected non-kin network members aged under 35 years for those aged 65–74 years is only 0.10. And only 15 per cent of the population aged 80 or more years has weekly contact with any non-kin aged less than 65 years. The number of children is strongly related to the total number of younger network members, because most younger network members are adult children. Further, participating in organisations (work and volunteer settings) that include people of diverse ages increases the likelihood of an older person having significant cross-age interactions with non-kin.

This paper examines the consequences of repartnering upon the social embeddedness of older adults' lives. The starting hypotheses, that repartnering is a stressful life event and is incompletely institutionalised, are examined using the NESTOR longitudinal survey data from The Netherlands on 4,449 respondents aged 55–89 years, together with in-depth interviews of 46 adults aged 50 or more years who had repartnered in later life. The results indicate that more repartnered older adults choose unmarried cohabitation and to ‘live apart together’ than remarriage. It was also found that when two partners come together, while not surprisingly their social networks become larger than those of separated older adults who do not enter a new relationship, less positively the quality of the subjects' relationships with their children was negatively affected. The older adults who opted for unmarried cohabitation and ‘living apart together’ relationships tended to have the weakest bonds with their children, principally for reasons associated with stress and (financial) insecurity.

Social and cultural changes that have taken place since the 1960s have had a major impact, in particular on the lives of young adults, but they have also affected the living conditions and opportunities of older adults. The presentation of a selection of relevant data about elderly people's demographic position in different countries of Europe is central in the second section. In the final section results of a Dutch survey are provided and information about new flexible forms of living arrangements when starting a new partner relationship after the age of fifty, are presented and discussed