Research Team for Social Participation and Community Health, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jissen Women's University, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2023 Apr 1;78(4):718-729. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbac195.
Previous research has suggested cross-national differences in the association between living alone and well-being among older adults. This study examined whether the association varied across social contexts within the country, Japan, in terms of varying degree of urbanization and differential time periods.
Data were obtained from a nine-wave nationwide longitudinal survey with a probability sample of Japanese adults aged 60 years and over. Respondents belonged to one of the three periods (around 1990, 2000, and 2015) according to the year they commenced participation. As many as 4,655 individuals from 575 municipalities provided 9,016 observation sets of two consecutive waves (t - 1 and t). Within a framework of the Hierarchical Generalized Linear Model, depressive symptoms at t were predicted based on changes in living arrangements from t - 1 to t and their cross-level interactions with gender, level of urbanization, and time period, controlling for various covariates at t - 1.
In general, older adults living alone continuously as well as those who started living alone between the waves showed more depressive symptoms than those coresiding with someone continuously. However, this tendency was more prominent among rural residents than their urban counterparts, especially for men. Moreover, the effect of continuously living alone on depressive symptoms became smaller in Period 2015 than that in Period 1990, because of the increase in depressiveness in coresident older adults.
Our findings indicate that living alone has a differential effect on older adults' well-being depending on the social context where residents' preferences for living arrangements and availability of formal services could vary.
先前的研究表明，独居与老年人幸福感之间的关联存在跨国差异。本研究通过考察日本国内不同城市化程度和不同时间段的社会背景下，这种关联是否存在差异，来探讨这一问题。
本研究的数据来自一项全国范围内的九轮纵向调查，样本为年龄在 60 岁及以上的日本成年人。根据开始参与调查的年份，受访者属于三个时期之一（1990 年左右、2000 年左右和 2015 年左右）。575 个市的 4655 名参与者提供了 9016 对连续两波（t-1 和 t）的观察数据。在分层广义线性模型的框架内，根据从 t-1 到 t 的居住安排变化及其与性别、城市化水平和时间段的交叉水平交互作用，来预测 t 时的抑郁症状，同时控制 t-1 时的各种协变量。
一般来说，连续独居的老年人和在波之间开始独居的老年人比连续与他人同住的老年人表现出更多的抑郁症状。然而，这种趋势在农村居民中比在城市居民中更为明显，尤其是男性。此外，由于同住老年人的抑郁程度增加，连续独居对抑郁症状的影响在 2015 年期间比在 1990 年期间变小。
我们的研究结果表明，独居对老年人的幸福感有不同的影响，这取决于居民对居住安排的偏好和正规服务的可获得性可能存在差异的社会背景。
