Most people want a well-paid job and a satisfactory professional status in their early 30s and the better they earn the lesser are their chances of being lonely, finds a new study.
This correlation is particularly strong in mid-adulthood as money is more important in this phase along with professional status.
“If we eliminate these factors from the overall result, the drastic increase of loneliness on old age disappears and a complex nonlinear trajectory is discernible,” said Maike Luhmann from University of Cologne in Germany.
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“This means that we can explain accurately why old people tend to get lonely but we do not yet know why there are phases in young and mid adulthood in which loneliness is more pronounced,” Luhmann added in a paper published in the journal Developmental Psychology.
The team conducted a representative survey among 16,132 participants and controlled for a number of well-known risk factors such as income, gender, health and social contacts.
The findings showed that having a good job in mid adulthood safeguards against loneliness life phase.
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In early and mid adulthood — in their early 30s and in their 50s — people tend to be lonely due to their decreasing social interactions and oftentimes low income, the researchers found.
Approximately at the age of 60, the loneliness people often experience in their 50s decreases again, reaching a low point at approximately seventy.
The rise in loneliness in old age is mainly attributed to the loss of one’s spouse or to health problems. Both risk factors are widespread in this age group, the authors noted.
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