Loneliness in Europe: Determinants, Risks and Interventions

This open-access volume accompanies the microdata release of the EU Loneliness Survey.

Loneliness, often referred to as the ‘epidemic of the 21st century’, has emerged as a grave public health concern. For years, a lack of comprehensive European cross-national data hindered a thorough examination of this issue. In 2022, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre conducted the inaugural EU Loneliness Survey, covering around 30,000 individuals in 27 European nations. The book sheds light on who is most affected by loneliness, identifies contributing experiences and behaviours, addresses the stigmatisation of loneliness and discusses its societal impact. Furthermore, it emphasises the importance of interventions to combat loneliness. Finally, the book discusses the challenges of survey design and offers valuable insights for the monitoring of loneliness in Europe in the future. This makes the book a must-read for scholars and academics interested in population economics, public health and social well-being.

Sylke V. Schnepf (PhD) is a senior policy advisor in the Science for Modelling, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy. She is part of the Survey Methods and Analysis Centre (SMAC) team conducting research on survey design, fairness and loneliness. She also contributes to the Competence Centre on Microeconomic Evaluation through research, teaching and advisory activities on quantitative education policy evaluation. Before joining the JRC in 2014, she was an associate professor in social statistics at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. Dr Schnepf has a long publication record on patterns of cross-national educational inequalities and counterfactual impact evaluation of policies aimed at mitigating these inequalities. She is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the JRC and a research fellow of the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn, Germany.

Béatrice d’Hombres (PhD) leads the Survey Methods and Analysis Centre (SMAC) within the Science for Modelling, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. She is the coordinator for the European Parliament Pilot Project on Loneliness at the JRC. With over 17 years of experience as a researcher and policy analyst at the JRC, Dr d’Hombres has worked in various fields, including labour economics, health economics and education economics, using applied econometric statistics and survey data analysis methodologies. Her research has been published in international journals such as the European Economic Review, Health Economics, Social Science & Medicine, the B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy and Social Indicators Research.

Caterina Mauri (PhD) is a post-doctoral researcher at the Brussels Institute for Social and Population Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, contributing to the INEQKILL project – an interdisciplinary research initiative focusing on the long-term evolution of mortality inequalities from 1800 to the present day. Dr Mauri holds a PhD in economics from the University of Southern Denmark and has previously worked at the Survey Methods and Analysis Centre of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. Her research interests include loneliness and mental well-being, fairness and inequality perceptions, regional and urban economics, the labour market for artists and creatives, art consumption and innovation and technology in history.