My definition of loneliness --- for purposes of contrast --- has to do with a conviction of meaning that may or ultimately have nothing to do with the presence of social support --- unfortunately, I am not aware of any data narrow enough for your specified needs.  I would like to know where you go from here with your work and I wish you the best.

Thanks. I´m relying on a survey which measures loneliness on a single item and and contains exact location indicator of each respondents. Loneliness is not my primary interest but as it is such a strong predictor of low SWB it needs to be addressed. And of course the spatial clustering of loneliness is an interesting paradox.

You could focus on indicators considered alternative to GDP (i.e. the gloabl happinnes index, etc.) I heard something about China government and Japan...

Hello Perikles and Randall,

a classical definition in social psychology for loneliness is that loneliness is an emotional or cognitive reaction upon a mismatch between a factual number of social relationships and their quality and the wished number and quality of relationships. So indeed it might not have anything to do with social support. Think about that movie 'Good Will Hunting' were we got that kid who is very smart but yet in exactly that missery. So he does not want to leave alone his people but obviously doesn't match the social circumstances which expresses in some kind of 'smart aggression'.

1) See Kim et al:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26281071_Loneliness_as_the_cause_and_the_effect_of_problematic_Internet_use_the_relationship_between_Internet_use_and_psychological_well-being

2) And Cacioppo 2002, and 2003.

3) And Cacioppo et al 2006 here: http://psychology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/cacioppo/jtcreprints/chwht06.pdf

4) And Hawkley and Cacioppo 2010 is nice. The DOI is: 10.1007/s12160-010-9210-8

Article Loneliness as the Cause and the Effect of Problematic Intern...

Hi Mikko, your question is interesting because loneliness is generally studied with negative emotions and not positive, such as happiness. However, I have a new pub coming out in the next issue of Journal of Rural Mental Health where the participants identified "happy times" as so important to staving off loneliness. I could email you a pdf if you send me your email but I can't upload the article because it is in press.

hi Mikko,

You have received a lot of valid answers to your question. Still, I´d like to mention an interesting author, a pioneer in research on loneliness and social support.  Only last Tuesday, Jenny de Jong Gierveld gave a lecture at the Leyden Academy on Ageing and Vitality, on crosscultural perspectives regarding loneliness. and social relations  Prof. Gierveld has developed a loneliness scale in her sociological work, which today is used in many countries (1), and she is involved in several large scale longitudinal studies on social networks, such as the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study and the Generations and Gender Surveys. She is an expert on demographic and social aspects of ageing, with particular reference to:

- well-being at later age and its relationship with social relations,

- the role of exchange of social support and its relationships with living conditions (rural or urban) and family arrangements (2), (3).

Some of her publications :

(1) Gierveld, Jenny De Jong, and Theo Van Tilburg. "A 6-item scale for overall, emotional, and social loneliness confirmatory tests on survey data." Research on Aging 28.5 (2006): 582-598.

(2) Scharf, Thomas, and Jenny de Jong Gierveld. "Loneliness in urban neighbourhoods: an Anglo-Dutch comparison." European Journal of Ageing 5.2 (2008): 103-115. 

(3) Gierveld, Jenny De Jong, and Marjolein van Broese Groenou. "Quality of Marriage and Social Loneliness in Later Life." Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research (2014): 5309-5312.

I hope this may help you, and I wish you the best..