Continued and new personal relationships in later life: differential effects of health.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study is to increase our understanding of declining network size with aging by differentiating between processes of loss and gain and studying the associations with various health problems.

METHODS

Six observations of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA) across a time period of 16 years are used to study detailed network changes in a large sample of Dutch older adults aged 55 to 85 at baseline.

RESULTS

Results from multilevel regression analyses show that network size declines with aging, in particular for the oldest old. The decline in network size is to a large degree due to a lack of replacement of lost relationships with new relationships. Results show differential effects of health.

DISCUSSION

The older old and people in poor health have limited possibilities to compensate for network losses and may have a serious risk of declining network size in later life.