【Discussion Paper Series by ESRC-JSPS Research Project on Japan and the UK】
How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the well-being of older people living alone in Japan? (revised: November, 2024)
The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has serious adverse effects on our daily lives. The impact may be highly significant for older people, particularly those living alone, because they lose the opportunity to meet friends and family owing to going out restrictions. However, studies examining the impact of living arrangements on older people during the pandemic are limited. Hence, this study uses data from Japan, the world’s first super-aging society, to examine the association between living arrangements and older adults’ well-being, measured by happiness, before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The differences-in-differences estimation that controls for individual fixed effects provides three findings. First, the happiness of older men living alone decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we did not find a significant impact of living alone among older women. Second, we used the quantile regression model to examine how the effect of living alone varied based on the happiness distribution. We found that the decline in happiness was most pronounced among older men with high happiness, but no significant effects were found in any quantile of the distribution for older women. Third, only the happiness of men living alone worsened when we used the detailed living arrangements variables. Overall, significant gender differences in the effect of living alone were found.
