The Loneliness of Many?: Investigating the Roots of Urban Russian Loneliness through WVS Data
A report by Christopher Swader at the regular LCSR seminar
On June 6, Christopher Swader (senior research fellow at the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research) delivered a report on "The Loneliness of Many?: Investigating the Roots of Urban Russian Loneliness through WVS Data" at the regular LCSR seminar.
Loneliness is often referred to as a serious mental and social problem. Loneliness predicts more likelihood of suicide attempts, carrying a weapon, stealing, avoiding taxes, violence against women and children. During the presentation author displayed preliminary results of his ongoing study. Chris aims to provide a sociological explanation to the phenomenon of the urban loneliness. The main questions of his research are following. First, is loneliness actually more prevalent in cities than in rural settlements? Then, what are the main determinants of loneliness? And whether there are different determinants for loneliness in urban areas and in rural areas?
Christopher uses data from the last wave of World Value Survey collected in Moscow, Tambov, non-urban Russian areas, and Tatarstan. The dependent variable is a measure of loneliness (“I often feel lonely”). List of independent variables includes Urban Values indicators (Individualism, Blasé attitude, and generalized trust), and Social Isolation indicators (Age, Relationship status). The results which Christopher comes up with are quite interesting. Collectivists with fewer kids and greater education feel lonelier than individualists with the same characteristics. Age makes everybody more dependent and, consequently, increases the probability of feeling lonely. Finally, immigrant status, unemployment, income and gender have no significant effect on loneliness.
The next step for the research is to explain the strong association between education and loneliness among the collectivists. Chris also noted that he intended to analyze data from Tatarstan deeply.
by Ruslan Almukhametov