ABSTRACT

SOCIAL INTEGRATION and feeling socially well embedded in the context of one’s community and family are important determinants of quality of life in late adulthood. Policy makers assembled in the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, September 1994, formulated their objectives in this respect as “To enhance, through appropriate mechanisms, the self-reliance of elderly people, and to create conditions that promote quality of life and enable them to work and live independently in their own communities as long as possible or as desired” (6.17, p. 39). An indication of the extent to which these objectives have been achieved is the absence of social integration in the form of loneliness. Loneliness is considered to be the outcome of the evaluation of the match between the quantity and quality of existing relationships and one’s relationship desires (Peplau & Perlman, 1982).