The economy of two solitudes. What is the impact of the growing number of single people in the world?

The difference between “living alone” and “feeling lonely” is not only psychological, the two forms of loneliness affect the economy in different ways: desired loneliness contributes to its growth, and involuntary loneliness has detrimental economic consequences, economists have found. about it talk Our colleagues from Econs.Online . We publish this article with their permission.

Lockdowns and self-isolation of people almost all over the world during the COVID-19 pandemic have attracted great attention of researchers to the problem of loneliness and its impact on psychological, physical and social health. Even before the pandemic, sociological and psychological literature paid sufficient attention to this problem, but so far few have been interested in the macroeconomic consequences of loneliness. On the data of European countries, such a relationship was tried to be established in their new study by Andres Rodriguez-Pose, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, and Chiara Burlina, a researcher at the Gran Sasso Research Institute.

There are two types of loneliness: one can be called forced, the other - voluntary or desired. When a person's social contacts are perceived by him as insufficient in quantity or quality, this loneliness is forced, experienced as painful, which can lead to depression and even increases the risk of premature death. On the contrary, such negative consequences are not associated with loneliness caused by a personal desire to live alone, without a family.

The language of loneliness You can live alone, but not be lonely, or you can live in a family, but feel lonely. The English language captures the distinction between loneliness as physical separation from others (alone) and loneliness as emotional isolation from others (lonely). In many other languages, including Spanish, Italian, French, and Russian, there is no such distinction.

Urbanization, an increase in the proportion of working women, an increase in life expectancy contribute to the fact that more and more people live alone : ​​for example, in Sweden and Norway, almost every second household consists of one person, in Russia almost every third, in China every seventh, and over the past half century or so, the share of such households in many countries has increased several times. But this loneliness is not necessarily forced, as - most often - in the elderly; loneliness is increasingly becoming a personal choice among younger generations who are postponing the creation of a family, but at the same time actively involved in social life. In the so-called "second demographic transition," the archetypal profile of the "lone senior citizen" was replaced by that of the "adult professional, often female, with a high level of education and stable employment," write Rodriguez-Pose and Burlina.

As a rule, different types of loneliness characterize different states of mind and reflect different attitudes towards life, which ultimately leads to different results at the level of the entire economy. A large proportion of voluntarily single people contributes to economic growth, while the growth of forced loneliness has devastating economic consequences: the key difference between “good” loneliness and “bad” loneliness lies precisely in the intensity of social contacts, the authors concluded after analyzing data for 139 regions of 13 European countries for 2011–2017

Database For their study, Rodriguez-Pose and Burlina looked at three main indicators of loneliness (regardless of its type): the proportion of people living alone in the total population; the total number of face-to-face meetings in the region and the frequency of face-to-face interactions, based on data from the European Social Survey surveys on how often respondents communicate with friends, relatives and colleagues. Respondents chose one of seven answers to this question: never; less than once a month; once a month; several times a month; once a week; few times a week; every day. Three indicators of loneliness were compared with data on the growth of GDP per capita.

Sociable loners

The “loneliness map” and the “sociability map” compiled by the authors (see inset) did not match: many areas with a high concentration of single people, such as Brussels or most regions of Great Britain and Sweden, also have a high sociability index. At the same time, for example, in France, less lonely southerners are more sociable than more lonely northerners.

Where the proportion of people who feel lonely is low, more interpersonal exchange of information and interaction are, according to the literature on economic geography, fundamental factors for the dissemination of new ideas , the development of knowledge and the formation of social capital, which in turn contribute to increased competitiveness and growth of economies . . On the contrary, lack of interaction and low social capital can increase feelings of loneliness, which not only affects individual mental health and well-being, but also weakens the potential of people to participate in economic activity and can reduce the potential of the economy itself. However, excessive sociability can also distract people from economic activity, that is, the relationship between the intensity of social contacts and economic results is not linear.

The choice to live alone is devoid of the negative consequences associated with loneliness as a sense of social isolation: many of those who live alone lead a more vibrant and active social life than those who live in large families. The growing importance of careers, especially for women, the greater preference for broad social contacts, often to the detriment of traditional family relationships, and the communication revolution have made living alone a lot easier than just a few decades ago.

The modern urban lifestyle is conducive to living alone. Living alone is expensive—or at least more expensive on average than with other people: for many people living alone, significant resources are required to fund housing costs, Rodriguez-Pose and Burlina point out, and such resources must be available to choose a single life. that Brookings estimates two-thirds of the global middle class live in cities: cities are more productive and prosperous than rural areas because high population densities allow more goods and services to be produced for less. With the development of cities, the well-being of their inhabitants increases and, accordingly, the proportion of those who can afford to live separately from others.

The economics of social connections

The analysis showed that there is no direct correlation between the rate of economic growth and the proportion of people living alone. But there is a direct correlation between economic growth rates and the level of social ties.

In regions where people actively communicate with each other, the economy grows faster than where they limit contacts. At the same time, an increase in the share of people living alone in a “sociable” region is associated with higher economic performance of the region: this suggests that an increase in the share of young socially active people who live alone in the region contributes to economic growth, write Rodriguez-Pose and Burlin (researchers took into account the factor of population aging, separating its influence). a similar conclusion in 2013 Their research is limited to Europe, but the American sociologist Eric Kleinenberg drew based on US data: people who live alone but do not feel lonely increase the economic well-being of the regions in which they live.

The researchers confirmed another pattern and found one anomaly. The first is confirmation of the hypothesis that too much communication is a waste of time: in regions where people communicate a lot, for example, in Portugal, in the south of France and in many provinces of Spain, economic growth rates are lower than in places where there are somewhat less sociable people. . In terms of the impact of social contacts on the economy, there is probably a middle ground between rarely meeting with others and spending a large part of life on unnecessary chatter, the researchers suggest: societies in which most people meet each other on a daily basis, and societies in which the majority meet with relatives , friends and colleagues less than once a week, are less likely to increase their wealth.

And the anomaly is that the high proportion of single people and the low level of communication in the region sometimes show a positive correlation with the pace of the economy. The presence in society of so-called nerds and computer geeks, who, if they communicate with others, then mainly through the Internet, and whose behavior is considered to be antisocial, can benefit society by increasing economic activity, the researchers write: for this, a loner does not have to be sociable, but be sure to be satisfied with your choice.

The fact that “good” loneliness is positively correlated with economic growth may have implications for economic policy, the authors write: in many regions of southern European countries, high levels of youth unemployment and temporary employment, as well as inflexible labor markets, often prevent young people from living independently — people who are already over 30 continue to live with their parents. This can be detrimental to the economy, the authors write: “In such cases, policies that encourage and facilitate independent living choices should be on the agenda of governments.” Stronger interventions may also be needed to combat the rise in “bad” loneliness in order to prevent or minimize its negative effects on people's health and socioeconomic development.