THE ECONOMICS OF LONELINESS
Loneliness Is Expensive. We Pay for It in Housing, Health, Care and Public Money.
There is an apartment somewhere tonight with one light on.
One person is paying the rent.
One person is paying the electricity bill.
One refrigerator is running.
One internet connection is active.
One insurance policy must be paid.
One kitchen heats a meal for one.
One car may be carrying one passenger.
And when that person becomes sick, old or unable to cope, there may be nobody in the next room.
Economists have spent decades studying productivity, inflation, interest rates, wages, public debt and demographic decline.
We have measured almost everything.
But perhaps we have underestimated one of the most profound economic transformations taking place inside developed societies:
the disappearance of sharing.
Not sharing in the digital sense.
Sharing in the oldest economic sense imaginable.
Sharing a roof.
Sharing a kitchen.
Sharing heating.
Sharing bills.
Sharing food.
Sharing childcare.
Sharing care for elderly parents.
Sharing risk.
Sharing time.
Sharing life.
And when sharing disappears, something extraordinary happens.
The same society needs more resources simply to maintain the same number of people.
That is the economics of loneliness.
FIRST, AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION
Living alone does not necessarily mean being lonely.
And being married, surrounded by colleagues or living in a large family certainly does not guarantee that someone is not lonely.
These are different phenomena.
Living alone is a household structure.
Social isolation describes an objective lack of social connections.
Loneliness is the subjective experience of insufficient or unsatisfying connection.
The distinction matters.
This article is not an argument against independence.