Social Health in New Ageing Populations

There is a large and growing body of research focused on reporting the prevalence, risk factors and consequences of loneliness for older adults in the UK and beyond. The majority of research is based on cross-sectional studies and does not represent the ‘new ageing populations’ which are challenging the presumed homogeneity of later life. Emblematic of this challenge are two groups defined by ‘new ageing identities’ based around ethnicity and sexuality. In this paper we report initial findings from the quantitative component of a mixed methods UK study focussing upon the social health of mid-life and older adults from new ageing populations. We present preliminary results from our analysis of loneliness in these two groups aged 50+ for waves 9-12 of the UK Understanding Society (US) survey. For both groups the prevalence of loneliness, defined as a score of 6+ on the 3-item UCLA scale is approximately 30% compared with 20% for the general population. Longitudinal analysis using 4 time points identifies three distinct loneliness trajectories, transient (lonely at one time point), fluctuating (lonely at 2+ non-consecutive time points) and chronic (lonely at each time point). For both LGBT and minority ethnic populations rates of chronic loneliness are 15% and 12% respective compared with 8% for the general population. Key predictors of increased loneliness include living alone, being female and financial strain. A key challenge in conducting this research is the small percentage of LGB (1.7%) and minority ethnic (8.3%) participants included in US.