Finding the upsides to living alone: Adaptation and inequality among older U.S. adults?
Jen-Hao Chen, Hayoung Oh, Markus SchaferAbstract
Objectives
This study investigates how the growing population of older Americans living alone adapts to daily life, testing three sociological hypotheses regarding “upsides” to solo living: spending more time outside, spending more time with non-residential ties, and spending more time in organized activities. We also consider whether such adaptations are unequal, investigating potential fault lines across key social categories including race/ethnicity, education, gender, and disability.
Methods
Using 2003–2019 American Time Use Survey data (N = 83,997), we employed multiple regression analysis to estimate both the likelihood of participation and the duration of time spent in each of these ways.
Results
Results support the notion of locational and social adaptation: older adults living alone spend significantly more time outside the home and more time with friends and non-residential family than their co-resident peers. However, we found that solo dwellers spend less time in organized activities. Consistent with one dimension of the unequal adaptation hypothesis, several behavioral patterns were stratified by race/ethnicity, with Black older adults standing out from each of the other groups.
Discussion
Findings point to living alone as a distinct social ecology rather than a simple marker of deficit, with older adults adapting through the reorganization of daily exposure to people and places. This adaptation does not appear strongly structured by most social categories, though strong racialized differences suggest that future research should continue to assess the way diverse older Americans live together and with others.