ifstudies.org
2026-03-14
In 1966, The Beatles released "Eleanor Rigby," a song about a lonely older woman written by a young Paul McCartney, who sang: "All the lonely people. Where do they all come from? All the lonely people. Where do they all belong?" Since then, the problem of loneliness among older people has not disappeared. In fact, it is growing and likely to continue to increase in the U.S. and other industrialized countries in the future. For example, a 2025 AARP poll found that loneliness affected 40% of those ages 45 and over in the U.S., up five points from 35% in both 2010 and 2018.
The increase in loneliness is linked to several broader societal trends, including longer life expectancy and aging societies, the rise in living alone, and increasing childlessness. Unsurprisingly, living alone is a risk factor for loneliness in old age, and in the U.S., the number of people living alone in their eighties and nineties is set to soar. According to a recent report from Harvard University's Join Center for Housing Studies, the percentage of households of people over 80 living alone in the U.S. will likely increase from 6% of all households in 2018 to 12% in 2028. This is partly a result of increasing life expectancies. Older people, women especially, often find themselves living alone after the death of a spouse, but whereas that used to happen when people were in their sixties, it is now happening at later ages so that people age 65 and over are now more likely to still live with their spouse than in 1990 (as noted by recent report from the Pew Research Center). Yet even adjusting for increasing life expectancy and the proportion of people in the population in older age groups, the number of years people can expect to live alone at the end of their lives is increasing, and this is particularly true for women.