Sustaining Social Connection in a Super-Aged Society: Changes in the Association Between Social Ties and Life Satisfaction Among Korean Older Adults, 2011–2023

Abstract

Population aging is reshaping later-life well-being, yet whether the tie–satisfaction association is itself stable over time is seldom researched. This study compares the 2011 (n = 10,899) and 2023 (n = 9951) waves of the Korean National Survey of Older Persons, a nationally representative repeated cross-section of Koreans aged 65+. Social contact was decomposed into total contact volume and non-face-to-face orientation, retaining socially isolated respondents via structural dummy variables. Models were estimated by year and pooled with year interactions. Mean life satisfaction rose from 3.04 to 3.36 even as the proportion reporting no friends rose from 0.2% to 10.1%. Total contact volume predicted life satisfaction in both years, but the association weakened significantly (interaction B = −0.042, p < 0.001), and this held under sampling weights. The old-old’s relative advantage reversed in the unweighted model (p = 0.001) but not under weights (p = 0.341) and is reported descriptively. Non-face-to-face orientation became a significant positive predictor by 2023, though its between-year change was not confirmed. Because the waves are independent samples, all between-year differences confound cohort and period and are not causal effects. Sustaining later-life satisfaction may depend on the mode, target, and quality of contact, not volume alone.

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