Loneliness is the painful mismatch between expectations of social connection and what happens in reality. Contrary to popular assumptions, it is not primarily a first-world problem: poor countries are much lonelier than rich ones, and the loneliest region is Africa.
A 2010 study estimated that social isolation shortens lives as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. More recent meta-analyses find that loneliness increases a person's risk of death at a given time by around 14%, even when controlling for unhealthy habits. Loneliness raises the risk of heart attacks, strokes, anxiety and depression.
In June 2025 the WHO published an analysis of 23 data sets, including the Gallup World Poll (150,000 people from roughly 150 countries), finding that the poorer a country is, the lonelier it tends to be. Western, individualistic societies, where more people live alone and religion is marginal, tend to be less lonely. In 2024 over a quarter of Africans surveyed said they had felt lonely the previous day. The loneliest country in the world is Madagascar, where 60% of people in the south reported feeling lonely the previous day.
The relationship holds within countries too: the richest people in the richest places are the least lonely; the poorest in the poorest are the most.
Poverty does not directly cause loneliness, but money affects how and how often people socialise. In richer countries, people spend far more time with friends, family and colleagues. The truly poor lose countless hours to drudgery: fetching water, hustling for cash. Poverty can also strain relationships through mistrust, conflict and stigma.
Migration aggravates loneliness: mentions of loneliness in English fiction rose in the 1800s as Britons left the countryside for cities. A review of 25 studies of older adults in China found loneliness rose sharply between 1995 and 2011, as young people abandoned villages for factory work.
In more collectivist societies, strict expectations -- for example, that children must care for ageing parents -- can trap people in dutiful but unsatisfying relationships. In individualistic cultures, people have more freedom to cut ties with those who make them unhappy.
The share of single households worldwide is expected to increase from 28% in 2018 to 35% by 2050, the UN reckons. In 2023 almost 25% of American adults ate every meal alone on a given day, up from 17% in 2003; among under-30s the share has nearly doubled. In 22 European countries the share of people who said they were "never lonely" fell from 59% in 2018 to 51% in 2022. The World Happiness Report found that across countries and ages, how often people share meals predicts life satisfaction almost as strongly as relative income or employment status.
Marion Demossier of the University of Southampton notes that since the pandemic her students have become markedly more solitary. Fewer young people are signing up for team sports. "There is a disconnection in society," she says. "Living together is eroding."
A study published in Nature Medicine found that living with a partner was roughly as beneficial for longevity as doing exercise. Regular visits with family, or having someone to confide in, also appeared to lower mortality risks.
In Frome, England, Dr Helen Kingston redesigned her medical practice in 2013 to prescribe social contact and trained thousands of residents as "community connectors". Between 2013 and 2017 unplanned hospital admissions in Frome fell by 14%, even as they rose by nearly 30% in the surrounding county of Somerset. In Zimbabwe, "friendship benches" outside clinics are staffed by trained older women known as "grandmothers" who sit, listen and offer advice.
management, n.: The art of getting other people to do all the work.