台大心理系

Although older adults' social connectedness has long been considered important and has been the focus of much public and research concern during the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about whether and how the actual daily social contacts of older adults might have due to large-scale social upheaval. This study assesses U.S. older adults' microsocial connectedness before and in the midst of COVID-19 period. The study analyzed data from respondents aged 50 and older from the 2019-2020 American Time Use Survey (N=9,697) using logistic regression and a hurdle model with state fixed-effects. Measures of external shock due to COVID-19 were linked to measures of daily social contact to number of daily COVID-19 cases and a stringency index measuring severity of state-level containment measures, controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, living arrangements, disability, and household composition. Results from the logistic regression revealed that a higher stringency index was associated with both lower likelihood of having any social contact and a lower rate of social contact. Further, both older adults' likelihood and rate of non-kin contact were substantially lower when the stringency index was high. However, for kin, older adults' likelihood and rate of contact were not associated with the stringency index—even for kin not living in the same household. The associations between daily number of COVID cases and social contact were in the expected direction, but completely explained by the stringency index. Findings suggest that the stringency of state-level containment measures rather than COVID-19 cases is the best predictor of older adults' daily social contact and that although overall social contact and non-kin contact declined during the pandemic, older adults maintained their kin contact. The findings point to the possibility of core network for older adults that can be resilient during a public health crisis.