School of Social Work, College of Health and Human Performance, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA.
Department of Sociology, Institute on Aging, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA.
Int J Aging Hum Dev. 2021 Jan;92(1):22-39. doi: 10.1177/0091415019871201. Epub 2019 Aug 29.
Loneliness and social isolation are significant public health problems. However, the community and neighborhood factors that contribute to this pandemic are less examined. Adopting a neighborhood resource-based social capital theory, we examined whether neighborhood trust was associated with older Americans' loneliness, number of friends, and perceived support from friends. We analyzed two waves of longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study, with a sample of 5,817 Americans aged 50 years and older. We used first difference models to analyze the data and controlled for potential confounders including perceived support from family and health status. Increases in the perception that neighbors are trustworthy and helpful were associated with statistically significant decreases in loneliness and increases in perceived social support from friends over a 4-year period. Findings have implications for conceptualizing social capital and for potential interventions targeting interpersonal trust and reducing loneliness and social isolation.
孤独和社会隔离是重大的公共卫生问题。然而，导致这一大流行病的社区和邻里因素却较少受到关注。本研究采用邻里资源型社会资本理论，考察了邻里信任是否与美国老年人的孤独感、朋友数量和感知到的朋友支持有关。我们分析了来自健康与退休研究的两波纵向数据，样本为 5817 名年龄在 50 岁及以上的美国人。我们使用一阶差分模型来分析数据，并控制了包括家庭感知支持和健康状况在内的潜在混杂因素。在 4 年的时间里，人们越来越认为邻居值得信赖和乐于助人，这与孤独感的显著降低以及感知到的来自朋友的社会支持的增加有关。这些发现对社会资本的概念化以及针对人际信任和减少孤独感和社会隔离的潜在干预措施具有重要意义。
