Having It All · Episode 7 of 10 · 20 min
Alone: Solo Aging and a Generation With No Caregiver
The panic version says more older Americans live alone than ever, but a smaller share of adults over 65 live alone today than in 1990, because men now live longer. The real change is composition: among women over 65 the divorced share tripled while the widowed share fell. Divorced women alone are far worse off, because Social Security treats them differently.
Who's who
- Richard FryPew researcher whose 2025 analysis corrected the living-alone story
- Susan L. Brown+1 more episodeSociologist who documented the gray divorce revolution
- I-Fen Lin+1 more episodeSociologist who traced older women's poverty after divorce
- Rachel MargolisDemographer who measured kinlessness among older Americans
- Ashton VerderyDemographer who projected growth of the kinless population
- Vivek Murthy+1 more episodeSurgeon General who declared loneliness an epidemic in 2023
- Julianne Holt-Lunstad+1 more episodePsychologist whose meta-analyses anchor loneliness-health evidence
- Eric KlinenbergNYU sociologist who describes 'intimacy at a distance'
Timeline
- 199029 percent of adults 65 and older live alone
- October 2012Brown and Lin publish 'The Gray Divorce Revolution'
- 2016'Elder Orphans Hiding in Plain Sight' paper appears
- 2017Margolis and Verdery measure Americans with no living close kin
- May 2023Surgeon General issues advisory on loneliness and isolation
- December 2025Pew reports 26 percent of adults 65 and older lived alone in 2023, down from 1990
Still debated
Living alone is not the same as being lonely, and the loneliness-mortality effect sizes come largely from observational studies where illness and poverty can confound the results.
← PreviousComing Apart: No-Fault Divorce and the Gray Divorce RevolutionNext →The Ledger: What a Lifetime of Caregiving Actually Cost
