Social Connections and Loneliness in OECD Countries

Reader’s guide

This guide provides details on the data and surveys used in this report, guidance for interpreting figures and a discussion of how differences – between groups and over time – are assessed.

Country coverage

This report includes data from OECD Member states, alongside outcomes for accession candidate countries, when data are available. In all figures, countries are denoted by their ISO3 code (Table 1).

Table 1. ISO3 country codes used in this report

Country	ISO3 code	Country	ISO3 code
OECD Member countries
Australia	AUS	Japan	JPN
Austria	AUT	Korea	KOR
Belgium	BEL	Latvia	LVA
Canada	CAN	Lithuania	LTU
Chile	CHL	Luxembourg	LUX
Colombia	COL	Mexico	MEX
Costa Rica	CRI	the Netherlands	NLD
Czechia	CZE	New Zealand	NZL
Denmark	DNK	Norway	NOR
Estonia	EST	Poland	POL
Finland	FIN	Portugal	PRT
France	FRA	Slovak Republic	SVK
Germany	DEU	Slovenia	SVN
Greece	GRC	Spain	ESP
Hungary	HUN	Sweden	SWE
Iceland	ISL	Switzerland	CHE
Ireland	IRL	Türkiye	TUR
Israel	ISR	United Kingdom	GBR
Italy	ITA	United States	USA
Accession candidate countries
Argentina	ARG	Indonesia	IDN
Brazil	BRA	Peru	PER
Bulgaria	BGR	Romania	ROU
Croatia	HRV	Thailand	THA

In each figure, data labelled “OECD” are simple mean averages of the OECD countries included in the figure, unless otherwise indicated. Whenever data are available for fewer than all 38 OECD countries, the number of countries included is specified (e.g. OECD 33), and the countries included are listed in the figure note. “OECD EU” is used when the OECD average includes only countries in the European Union; “OECD EU-EFTA” is used when the OECD average includes only countries in either the European Union or the European Free Trade Association.

Data sources

This report collates data on social connections from high quality, large sample size surveys. The majority of these are multi-country, internationally comparable surveys, including official statistics – such as the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey (EU-SILC) – as well as high quality private or academic exercises. The report also supplements these with national data from official surveys fielded by OECD Member state national statistical offices or government departments, to highlight how findings either complement – or diverge from – OECD average patterns. Detailed information on the surveys referenced in this report – including country coverage, sample size, notes on data quality, sampling methodology and survey mode – are included in the Chapter 2 Annex.

Note that estimates provided in this report are summary statistics – i.e., simple average outcomes for a given country or population group, without controlling for additional socio-demographic factors.

Population groups considered in inequality analyses

Chapter 3 disaggregates social connections outcomes by different population groups. The ways in which each population group are defined are described in detail in the Chapter 3 Annex, additional information is included in each figure note throughout the report as needed.

Population breakdowns are only reported if sample sizes are sufficiently large enough to do so, defined as having at least 100 observations per population group / country / year grouping. In most instances, only findings for the OECD average are shown, however because the OECD average is a simple average of each country average, individual countries must have sufficiently large samples so as not to distort the overall average. For this reason, the countries included in the OECD average may vary across both indicators and population groups considered and are listed in figure notes throughout the report.

Assessment of significant differences: Between population groups and trends over time

Chapter 3 includes information about significant differences in social connections outcomes between population groups, and Chapter 4 assesses significant changes in these outcomes over time (defined as the difference in average outcomes in a baseline year as compared to the most recent year for which data are available). In all instances, differences between means (group A vs group B, or year 1 vs year 2) are determined using a basic t-test of means; significance is assessed at the 5% level. Significance is only assessed for international, multi-country surveys for which microdata are available. Note that because many of the international surveys have very large sample sizes, we are powered to detect small effects – these differences may be very small in magnitude, meaning that though they are significant from a statistical perspective they may not seem large in absolute terms. This nuance is discussed in the text, where relevant.