Is Living Alone Bad for Your Health? New Data From Spain

David Sven Reher , Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Miguel Requena, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)

The goal of this paper is to address how living alone impacts the likelihood of death among mature adult and elderly persons in Spain. Making use of a new data set based on linked administrative registers for Spain (Movimiento Natural de la Población and 2011 Census), crude and standardized mortality rates by sex, age and coresidence (alone/not alone) are calculated to find patterns of differential mortality associated to household status; mortality differentials between coresidential statuses considering seven types of cause of death are estimated too. Initial results point to a very clear mortality/coresidence pattern associated with age: while there is excess mortality among men (50-79) and among women (50-59) living alone, in later life (men over 80 and women over 70) people living with others are more likely to die than those living alone. These findings suggest powerful selection mechanisms that will be clarified by means of multivariate models.

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 Presented in Session 249. Social and Economic Determinants of Health and Mortality