Abstract
Population ageing requires society to adjust by ensuring additional types of services and assistance for elderly people. These may be provided by either organized services and sources of informal social support. The latter are especially important since a lack of social support is associated with a lower level of psychological and physical well-being. During the Covid-19 pandemic, social support for the elderly has proven to be even more crucial, also due to physical distancing. Therefore, this study aims to identify and describe the various types of personal social support networks available to the elderly population during the pandemic. To this end, a survey of Slovenians older than 64 years was conducted from April 25 to May 4, 2020 on a probability web-panel-based sample (n = 605). The ego networks were clustered by a hierarchical clustering approach for symbolic data. Clustering was performed for different types of social support (socializing, instrumental support, emotional support) and different characteristics of the social support networks (i.e., type of relationship, number of contacts, geographical distance). The results show that most of the elderly population in Slovenia has a satisfactory social support network, while the share of those without any (accessible) source of social support is significant. The results are particularly valuable for sustainable care policy planning, crisis intervention planning as well as any future waves of the coronavirus.
Highlights
The Covid-19 pandemic (SARS-CoV-2) has affected masses of people around the world, with some being disproportionally exposed to the associated risk due to their age, employment status, financial status, illness or other factors [1, 2]
The following relevant types of social support and corresponding name generators in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic were considered: informal socializing (“Who are the people you have been socializing with during the time of social isolation? This can be face to face or by phone, computer, tablet, and so on.”), emotional support (“To whom do you usually talk to these days about personal things that are important to you?”), and instrumental support
This population is very heterogeneous, engaged in different types of social support networks, not all of which are effective in their protecting role, meaning that some groups of the elderly are more vulnerable since they lack social support or the support is insufficient
Summary
The Covid-19 pandemic (SARS-CoV-2) has affected masses of people around the world, with some being disproportionally exposed to the associated risk due to their age, employment status, financial status, illness or other factors [1, 2]. One such group is the elderly, who are vulnerable by being at greater risk of death if infected [3,4,5], and because those whose only social contacts are outside the home are more likely to lack social support [6] due to the preventive measures imposed to reduce the coronavirus’ spread (e.g., physical distancing and self-isolation). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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