Time spent alone or together, household type, and loneliness: Descriptive evidence from Germany

BACKGROUND: Loneliness is a critical social issue with far-reaching implications for individual well-being and population health.OBJECTIVE: We examined how German women’s and men’s perceptions of loneliness are associated with time spent alone or, conversely, with joint time use across different household types.METHODS: Using data from the 2022 survey of the German Time Use Study, we employed logistic regression models to examine the association between time use patterns and reported feelings of loneliness among German women (n=2,788) and men (n=2,242) across different household settings.RESULTS: Solitary time was positively associated with feelings of loneliness for both men and women, but with stronger relative associations for men. Household type accounted for a substantially larger share of this association for women. Predicted probabilities of feeling lonely were lowest in partnered households for both men and women. Time spent with people outside the household was negatively associated with loneliness across nearly all groups, and also more strongly so for men.CONCLUSIONS: Time use is a relevant social determinant of loneliness – for men more than for women – and, therefore, an important dimension of population health.CONTRIBUTION: This study is the first to examine the association between time use patterns and feelings of loneliness across different household types in Germany.