Health and Quality of Life for Middle-Aged Adults Living Alone

Dear Colleagues,

Changing economic, cultural, and social conditions have contributed to an increase in the number of one-person households, indicating that 13% of all households worldwide were one-person households in 2016. It has been known that living alone is related to a number of negative health outcomes (e.g., diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity), increased risk of psychosocial problems (e.g., loneliness and social isolation), and lower quality of life as compared to the counterpart. As the gateway to old adults, middle age is the critical period to live a healthy life both physically and psychosocially. As compared to old adults, middle-aged adults living alone may particularly have poorer health outcomes and a lower quality of life because most health policies focus more on old adults in many countries. Therefore, more attention needs to be paid to this segment of the population, and it is necessary to determine the association between health and quality of life for middle-aged adults so that we can understand what they need and provide a more tailored intervention with middle-aged adults among various age groups living alone.

This Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) focuses on the current state of knowledge on the links between living alone, health, and quality of life for middle-aged adults. New research papers, reviews, and intervention studies are welcome to this issue. Other types accepted include methodological papers and brief reports.

Dr. Heesook Son
Guest Editor

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• middle-aged adults living alone
• health behaviors
• health outcome
• quality of life
• psychosocial factors