Who Gets Help? A National Longitudinal Study of Personal Networks and Pandemic Support among Older Adults.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Personal networks provide social support for older adults, perhaps especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when traditional avenues may be disrupted. We provide one of the first population-based studies on how pre-pandemic personal networks predict support during the pandemic among older adults, with attention to gender and race variation.

Method

We analyzed longitudinal data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project Round 3 (2015/16) and COVID-19 Round (2020) (N=2622, 55.68% female, 78.75% white, aged 50-99), a nationally representative survey of community-dwelling older Americans. We considered structure (i.e., size, density) and composition (i.e., proportion female and kin) of pre-pandemic personal networks, estimating multinomial logistic models

SUBMITTER: Copeland M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9452150 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature