Loneliness in older adults: a comparative study of four southern European countries López Doblas, Juan Palomares-Linares, Isabel Sánchez Martínez, Mariano Loneliness Older adults Mediterranean countries SHARE The SHARE data collection was primarily funded by the European Commission through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHARE-I3: RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005-028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006-028812) and FP7 (SHARE-PREP: N°211909, SHARE-LEAP: N°227822, SHARE M4: N°261982). Additional funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research, the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, the U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01_AG09740-13S2, P01_AG005842, P01_AG08291, P30_AG12815, R21_AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG_BSR06-11, OGHA_04-064, HHSN271201300071C) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www .share -project.org). Loneliness is a social problem that has been typically associated to the subjective perception of a deficit in interpersonal relationships. Loneliness affects especially elderly people, and it is often associated with processes such as health decline or loss of a partner. Moreover, it has been found that in Europe the prevalence of loneliness is higher in Mediterranean than in Nordic countries, maybe because of material and cultural differences between them. However, so far southern European countries have not been specifically compared with each other to ascertain whether there are singularities in the way in which loneliness is affecting the elderly in these countries. Our study fills this information gap. Using secondary data from the sixth wave of SHARE (The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe), we have found significant differences in the way loneliness affect people over 65 in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. This leads us to question global considerations about the countries of southern Europe regarding loneliness in older adults that prevail in the international literatura. 2026-01-19T11:00:15Z 2026-01-19T11:00:15Z 2020-08-07 book part López Doblas, Juan; Palomares Linares, Isabel y Sánchez Martínez, Mariano (2020): “Loneliness in older adults: a comparative study of four southern European countries”, pp: 87-102. En: Entrena, Soriano y Duque (eds). Social Problems in Southern Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. doi:10.4337/9781789901436 9781789901429 9781789901436 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/109875 10.4337/9781789901436 eng embargoed access Edward Elgar Publishing