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The transition to living alone and psychological distress in later life
journal contribution
posted on 2018-12-19, 11:19 authored by Juliet StoneJuliet Stone, Maria Evandrou, Jane FalkinghamBackground: living alone in later life has been linked to psychological distress but less is known about the role of the transition into living alone and the role of social and material resources.Methods: a total of 21,535 person-years of data from 4,587 participants of the British Household Panel Survey aged 65+ are analysed. Participants provide a maximum 6 years' data (t0-t5), with trajectories of living arrangements classified as: consistently partnered/ with children/alone; transition from partnered to alone/with children to alone. General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-12 caseness (score >3) is investigated using multi-level logistic regression, controlling for sex, age, activities of daily living, social and material resources.Results: after a transition from partnered at t0to alone at t1, the odds for GHQ-12 caseness increased substantially, but by t3returned to baseline levels. The odds for caseness at t0were highest for those changing from living with a child at t0to living alone at t1but declined following the transition to living alone. None of the covariates explained these associations. Living consistently alone did confer increased odds for caseness.Conclusions: living alone in later life is not in itself a strong risk factor for psychological distress. The effects of transitions to living alone are dependent on the preceding living arrangement and are independent of social and material resources. This advocates a longitudinal approach, allowing identification of respondents' location along trajectories of living arrangements. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society.
Funding
This research is funded by ESRC Grant number RES-625-28-0001. The Centre for Population Change is a joint initiative between the University of Southampton and a consortium of Scottish Universities in partnership with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and National Records of Scotland (NRS).
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Published in
Age and AgeingVolume
42Issue
3Pages
366 - 372Citation
STONE, J., EVANDROU, M. and FALKINGHAM, J., 2013. The transition to living alone and psychological distress in later life. Age and Ageing, 42(3), pp. 366 - 372.Publisher
© the Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics SocietyVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/Publication date
2013Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by OUP under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ISSN
0002-0729eISSN
1468-2834Publisher version
Language
- en