Why men are lonelier than women

Three key predictors of loneliness for young adults

So there I was, reading academic journal articles about loneliness, like all the cool kids do, when I found this chart:

😍😍😍

But when I got to the “Meta-analytic evidence shows that gender differences are small to negligible” I was like *tires screeching*.

If you’re new here, I’ve written a lot about how and why men are lonelier than women on average.

So, of course I had to read that study.

First, I’m writing almost exclusively about the US, and the researchers evaluated studies in English, German, Dutch, and French. I suspect the gender divide is larger in the US than in the UK, Germany, France, or the Netherlands basically because our masculinity is more toxic. ‘murica.

Second, while gender differences are small over the course of a lifetime, the largest differences were among people between the ages of 21 and 40.

This age group is worth paying attention to for a few reasons. First, the authors pointed to a recent German study which “found a peak in loneliness for that age group (Luhmann & Hawkley, 2016).”

Second, what happens to that age group will impact society for decades. Their loneliness today impacts replacement rates, for instance. And future healthcare costs.

Luhmann & Hawkley found three key predictors of loneliness for young adults:

1. Income

2. A full-time job

3. Romantic partnership

Young adults are “expected” to have those three things. Failure to meet expectations is lonely and isolating.

Gender normativity/sexism dictates that it’s more important for a man to have a job and a high income than it is for a woman (Eccles, 2007; Pinquart & Sörensen, 2000). Plus, we punish men more harshly than women for violating gender norms. And gender norms make it not having a romantic partner lonelier for men than women, at least in the US.

Low income (along with poor health) seems to correlate with loneliness across a range of age groups. Researchers find that being poor and sick makes it harder to socialize. Which is further grist for my mill that a social safety net (ideally a UBI) could go a long way toward alleviating loneliness.

For the full-time job bit, legalize work.

And for promoting romantic relationships? There’s a lot of evidence that getting more men into high-paying jobs will take care of that.

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