Both the emotional pain and financial cost from health issues related to loneliness make it an expensive feeling. Many demographic factors and life situations put us at higher risk for it.
Related articles: Working with Loneliness: Definitions and Characteristics, The Stigma and Shame of Loneliness.
Introduction
It would be great to think that loneliness is just a little problem of finding more social contacts, but it is far more extensive than that. It shows up, broadly speaking, in most domains of life, and worse, in so many demographics and life situations that most of us will not escape a few bouts of it over our lifetime. Yet it is highly impactful and costly.
In the previous (first) article in this series on loneliness, we defined loneliness, differentiating it from isolation and from solitude, and we explained the different types of it. Today we review the demographics and life situations which can trigger periods of loneliness and offer statistics – some staggering – related to the cost of it. But first we look at typical life consequences for lonely clients.
Mental health challenges
Loneliness is strongly linked to an increased risk of mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and heightened stress levels. Negative self-perception and a decreased sense of self-worth arise from prolonged feelings of loneliness, or even of low levels of social interaction.
Cognitive issues
Cognitive decline and an increased risk of dementia occur for older adults as a result of loneliness, and a lack of social stimulation may contribute to a decrease in cognitive functioning.
Physical health problems
Adverse physical health outcomes, such as cardiovascular issues, weakened immune systems, and an increased risk of premature mortality are all correlated with chronic loneliness.
Impaired sleep problems
Although sleep problems and loneliness co-occur, this may be a chicken-or-egg question. Research shows that sleep patterns are often disrupted by loneliness, so lonely people may struggle to fall asleep or to experience restorative sleep, but sleep disturbances also contribute to loneliness, as the mental and emotional distress of not being rested makes it more difficult to reach out to alleviate loneliness (related reading: How to Sleep: Science-backed Tools and Strategies).
Undermined relationships
Lonely people do not communicate at their best level, and the impaired communication may yield strained connections, which jeopardises the development and maintenance of healthy relationships; a negative maintaining cycle occurs (Nobel, 2023; Wigfield, 2024; Managing Loneliness [pdf], n.d.).
Who is at risk for loneliness?
The short answer is: everyone at one time or another, because, while some groups are more likely to be targeted for the exclusion or rejection that can engender loneliness, everyone undergoes life transitions which can result in periods of (hopefully transient) loneliness.
Demographic factors leading to loneliness
These can vary in prominence from culture to culture, resulting in different experiences of loneliness for members of different groups, according to questions of cultural values and norms, the economy of the culture, and structural and other inequities in the community. Certainly, common demographic factors are age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and disability.
Age
Two age periods stand out in studies of loneliness: a younger cohort of between 16 and 24 years, and an older one of people over 65. Sadly, many young people today find it hard to develop and maintain meaningful connections, a situation made worse by the assumption that young people find it easy to make friends and are always out partying. Social media has a role to play here, too, which we take up in the last article of the series. In older folk and others, there can be problems of mobility (difficulty just getting somewhere) or physical impairments (such as sight or hearing) which make relating difficult; this is apart from the heartrending reality that people can feel overwhelmed to “start over” with relationships when they lose those closest to them in their later years.
Gender
Studies show that women are more likely to feel lonely than men, possibly because they may experience widowhood more often than men, are more likely to live alone, and are at higher risk for chronic illness and disability. But we need to accept this statistical finding lightly, in that women are more likely than men to admit to feeling lonely, so men’s loneliness may be underreported.
Marital status
In general, being married has been regarded as a buffer against loneliness, and for men, it is, as single men are lonelier than married ones. But for women who are unhappy in their marriage, that institution engenders loneliness, meaning that marital status can be a trigger for women.
Sexual orientation
For those who are other than heterosexual, male- or female-identifying individuals, loneliness may be present. Western societies in recent decades have passed laws guaranteeing the LGBTIQ and transgender communities the same rights as heterosexual, male- or female-identifying individuals. However, even for those living in liberal, Western nations (and certainly for those in communities where being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender is still a crime), there can be exclusion, rejection, and judgments which lead to profound loneliness due to non-acceptance, stigmatisation, and resultant low self-esteem. Relationships become fraught as people “come out” with their authentic sense of self.
Ethnicity
Minoritised groups (e.g., Black, Asian, Latinx, and Native American communities in the United States and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and some immigrant groups in Australia) are more likely to be at risk of loneliness when living in White communities; they may also find it more difficult to access help to overcome loneliness. For people immigrating to a country or community whose ethnicity is different from their own, there are often issues of how to behave appropriately in the new culture, how to get needs met when they don’t speak the local language, and how to “be themselves” while fitting in.
Disability/difference
40% of U.S. adults with a disability or chronic condition report feeling lonely or being isolated. In the U.K., people with a disability are four times more likely than those without a disability to feel lonely. This arises not only from a greater proportion of mobility issues (just getting on and off public transportation and in and out of buildings can be a challenge), but also from issues such as chronic pain or learning disabilities which limit a person’s capacity for social interaction. As if the resultant lack of self-confidence and self-acceptance were not difficult enough, such individuals often experience higher levels of negative stereotypes, hate crimes, and other discrimination (categories adapted from Wigfield, 2024).
Beyond demographic factors there are the inevitable life transitions, which often engender loneliness due to the individual being thrown into a new, unknown situation that they must navigate to reconnect socially.
The life situations that trigger loneliness
Here we could list just about any change, but to call attention to how easily we (or our client) can move from feeling socially supported to feeling lonely, just contemplate for a moment this list of loneliness-engendering life transitions:
- Going away to university
- Getting married
- Moving to a new community/country
- Having a baby
- Getting a divorce
- Being in an abusive relationship – or leaving one
- Changed employment status (quitting a job, getting a new job, or stopping employment altogether)
- Natural and human-made disasters
- Becoming disabled or acquiring a health condition
- Becoming a caregiver
- Ceasing being a caregiver
- Changed financial status
- “Empty nest” syndrome
- Bereavement
- Changing religious or spiritual affiliation (Medicare Mental Health, n.d.; Wigfield, 2024)
Life can be highly inventive at presenting us with circumstances that make us feel, temporarily at least, like we are “alone in the universe” dealing with the challenge. What we have to hope is that, when situations such as the above occur, we are able to recruit the inner resources to overcome the loneliness. But though most of us do eventually move on from lonely periods, it is still costly, both to us as individuals, and – in financial terms – to our employers, communities, and nation.
The costs of chronic loneliness
Holt-Lundstad: The cost to your health
Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad has published widely-quoted findings about the relationship between loneliness and health. Specifically, she and her team conducted a meta-analysis of 148 studies. These showed that those with solid social relationships are 50% less likely to die prematurely than those with few or weak social relationships. When she controlled for some factors, she found the even more striking result that the impact of lacking social connection on reducing life span is equal to the risk of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, and it is greater than the risk associated with obesity, excess alcohol consumption, and lack of exercise.
The protective effect of social connection remained constant when other variables, such as age, sex, health status, and cause of death were analysed. In other words, Dr. Holt-Lunstad’s work has found that weak social connections can be a significant danger to our health (Holt-Lunstad, et al, 2010; Wigfield, 2024).
The findings generated a maelstrom of public reaction. By the time Holt-Lunstad and her team published another study five years later, burgeoning research papers were showing that loneliness was associated with:
- 29% higher risk of coronary heart disease
- High blood pressure
- 32% higher risk of stroke
- 41% increased risk of dementia (when loneliness goes up one point on a 1-5 scale)
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Lower-quality sleep
- Immune system dysfunction
- Impulsive behaviour
- Impaired judgment (Holt-Lunstad et al, 2015; Wigfield, 2024; Murthy, 2020)
The financial costs of chronic loneliness
Sadly, the costs for loneliness that an individual incurs do not remain with the individual, though these are heavy for the person. Rather, they extend to the workplace, the community, and the nation. Here are some frightening statistics:
- Stress-related absenteeism attributed to loneliness costs U.S. employers approximately $154 billion annually.
- Social isolation among older people costs the U.S. government nearly $7 billion in additional health care costs per year.
- In Australia, loneliness is estimated in a KPMG report to cost $2.7 billion per year, or more than $1550 per person per year.
- The Australian annual costs (above) do not count factors related to loneliness. The KPMG report suggests that we add in the cost of depression, the figure is more like $60 billion annually, and if costs for addictions are added, the cost of loneliness is a surreal $80 billion annually.
- The collective costs of chronic loneliness in the U.K. are calculated to be around £10,000 per person per year – this includes work productivity costs, but excludes health and social care system costs, which would make the sum staggeringly higher.
- In the U.S., lonely workers had three times the rate of diagnosed opioid use disorders as their well-connected colleagues, a clear signal of increased addiction risk.
- Lonely employees in the U.S. had 22% greater per capita medical and prescription drug costs than those who were not lonely.
- As much as 90% of annual U.S. medical expenditures are for people with chronic and mental health conditions. Healthcare spending in 2021 totalled $4.3 trillion, representing 18.3% of U.S. gross domestic product (Wigfield, 2024; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2022; Nobel, 2023).
Whew! In short, feeling lonely is an expensive, although increasingly common, feeling.
Conclusion
In this article, we have outlined the major areas where loneliness impacts our lives, the major demographic factors and life situations which can trigger loneliness, and the scarcely believable statistics showing how costly it is, both to personal health and to the bottom lines of employers, communities, and national health systems.
Our lonely clients come to us because they feel frustrated and are not sure how to go about course correction toward a socially connected life. The aspects of loneliness which we have discussed in this and the first article of the series are essential to know, but effective treatment demands that we also zero in on the nature of the loneliness “territory” our client has entered, as each territory has unique “exit routes.”
In the last article of this series, we will discuss therapeutic approaches which offer clients a way out of the territories of trauma, illness and “difference”, ageing, and modern technology.
Key takeaways
- Loneliness negatively impacts people in most life areas, giving challenges to mental health, cognitive function, physical health, sleep, and relationships.
- Common demographic factors affecting loneliness are age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and disability.
- Life situations which can engender periods of loneliness include most changes (especially those related to either moving or doing caregiving), relational changes, natural and human-made disasters, and changes in affiliation (especially religious/spiritual).
- Empirical studies by Holt-Lunstad and associates demonstrated multiple areas where health is substantially undermined by loneliness
- Myriad statistics detail the huge and wide-ranging financial costs of loneliness for companies, communities, and nations.
References
- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (2022). National Health Expenditure Data: Historical, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Retrieved on 17 April 2025 from: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical
- Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T., & J. Layton, J.B. (2010). Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-Analytic Review, PLOS Medicine 7(7) (July 2010), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316.
- Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T.B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality, Perspectives on Psychological Science 10(2), (2015): 227–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614568352.
- Managing Loneliness (pdf). (n.d.). Managing Loneliness. Author. Retrieved from Etsy site, 16 May, 2025.
- Medicare Mental Health. (n.d.). Understanding feelings of loneliness. Australian Government: Department of Health and Aged Care. Retrieved on 16 May 2025 from: https://www.medicarementalhealth.gov.au/living-well/understanding-loneliness
- Murthy, V. (2020). Together: Loneliness, health and what happens when we find connection. London: Profile Books Ltd. eISBN 9781782835639
- Nobel, J. (2023). Project unlonely: Navigate loneliness and reconnect with others. Great Britian: Headline Home (an imprint of Headline Publishing Group). eISBN: 978 1 4722 8704 5
- Wigfield, A. (2024). Loneliness for dummies. Hoboken, New Jersey, USA: John Wiley and Sons, inc. (ePDF); ISBN 978-1-394-22933-8 (ePub)