Social isolation is characterized by a lack of contact with other people in normal daily living—in the workplace, with friends, and in social activities. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), social isolation is “both a symptom and a cause of social distress.”1 It may follow a difficult event in a person’s life—the loss of a job, the breakdown of a marriage, illness or financial difficulties.
Feelings of isolation can, in turn, make it difficult for that individual to reintegrate socially and can have serious consequences: “Social isolation can be a downward spiral: feelings of exclusion affect morale, and lack of contacts with other people may reduce both social and economic opportunities.”2
The social isolation people experience is correlated with life satisfaction. Countries whose citizens report lower levels of social isolation also report higher levels of life satisfaction.
Social isolation is measured here as the proportion of respondents in each country who answered that they “rarely” or “never” spent time socializing with friends, colleagues, or others in social groups.
The World Values Survey is a project based in Stockholm, Sweden that aims to assess the state of sociocultural, moral, religious and political values of different countries around the world. There have been five waves of surveys from 1981 to 2007, but only the fourth wave (1999-2000) asked the question about frequency of contact with other people. Each country is asked the same questions using a detailed questionnaire in face-to-face interviews.
Almost 6 per cent of Canadian survey respondents said they rarely or never spend time with friends, colleagues, or others in social groups. This rate of social isolation is triple that of the top-performing country, the Netherlands, and double that of the United States. Japan had the highest rate of social isolation among the countries listed here: over 15 per cent of Japanese said they rarely or never spend time in social groups.
1OECD, Society at a Glance: OECD Social Indicators—2005 Edition (Paris: Author, 2005), p. 82.
2OECD, Society at a Glance: OECD Social Indicators—2005 Edition (Paris: Author, 2005), p. 82.