Where in the world are people loneliest and does age matter?

Europeans can expect to get lonelier as they age – but Americans could face their biggest social lull in midlife, new research suggests.

Loneliness has emerged as a major public health issue that raises the risk of everything from depression and type 2 diabetes to dementiaand stroke. But it’s often thought of as a problem afflicting the very young and the very old, with the middle-aged population sometimes overlooked.

For the new study, researchers measured the loneliness levels of more than 64,000 people aged 50 to 90 in 29 countries, most of them in Europe. They used a loneliness scale that took into account how...
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