Abstract
Despite multimorbidity trends pointing to an increase in the number of older people with chronic diseases and functioning limitations in Western countries, the proportion of older adults who report good self-rated health has also increased. One of the explanatory factors for the so-called ‘disability paradox’ is that meaningful and satisfactory social relations buffer the negative impact of health decline. The aim of this chapter is to explore the role of social networks (SN) in the interplay between multimorbidity and health-related wellbeing, namely self-rated health status and loneliness, among the ‘oldest old’ population (80+) in Spain. Data were drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (Wave 6; N = 1287). Bivariate analyses (ANOVA) were used to describe the associations between the social networks and the physical and mental conditions of older people. Logistic and linear regression models were employed to explore the mediating effect of social networks in this evaluation. Results showed that, despite the high level of multimorbidity, the assessment that the oldest old population made of their health-related wellbeing was mediated by some facets of their social relations. Several aspects of their social networks, such as proximity and satisfaction, mediated the relationship between morbidity and health-related wellbeing.
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Notes
- 1.
The analysis considered four sub-networks: spouse, children, other relatives and no kinship. This variable counted the number of sub-networks.
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Acknowledgments
We want to thank the editors and the reviewers, who with their thoughtful and constructive comments have contributed to a notable improvement in the initial text. We also want to thank Rosa Gómez Redondo, for her contribution to the initial approach of this chapter, which undoubtedly contributed to increasing its relevance and interest.
This paper uses data from SHARE Wave 6 (DOIs: https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w1.700, https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w2.700, https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w3.700, https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w4.700, https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w5.700, https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w6.700, https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w7.700), see Börsch-Supan et al. (2013) for methodological details. (1) The SHARE data collection has been 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), FP7 (SHARE-PREP: GA N°211909, SHARE-LEAP: GA N°227822, SHARE M4: GA N°261982) and Horizon 2020 (SHARE-DEV3: GA N°676536, SERISS: GA N°654221) and by DG Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion. 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).
The research from which this chapter has emerged has been developed with the financial support of the National R + D + I Plan, within the project “Families, places and generations. Spatial and generational configuration of the family ties of the elderly and consequences for health and well-being” (CSO2016-80908-R).
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Puga, D., Fernández-Carro, C., Fernández-Abascal, H. (2021). Multimorbidity, Social Networks and Health-Related Wellbeing at the End of the Life Course. In: Rojo-Pérez, F., Fernández-Mayoralas, G. (eds) Handbook of Active Ageing and Quality of Life. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58031-5_37
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