Gallup Survey: 17 Percent of Americans Report Feeling Lonely Daily

According to a new survey, loneliness in America is on the decline as people come out of the isolation that was so profound during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gallup finds in its survey of U.S. adults that 17% still report that they felt loneliness “a lot of the day yesterday,” while as recently as March 2021, 25% of respondents reported experiencing loneliness the prior day.

The decline in loneliness since March 2021 is partly explained by the transition into the vaccine era of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent broad reopening of everyday life, Gallup observes.

Young adults under the age of 30 (24%) and those in lower-income households earning less than $24,000 per year (27%) suffer higher levels of daily loneliness than their older and higher-income counterparts, according to the February 2023 survey.

Seniors age 65 and older report the lowest daily levels of loneliness. People who are married or partnered also reported lower levels of loneliness. Single people were most likely to be lonely during the pandemic.

Young adults are more likely to be single, whereas their older, higher-income counterparts are more likely to be married with children, two factors that can mitigate loneliness, Gallup notes. 

Older and higher-income adults, in turn, are also more likely to be in professional jobs that routinely involve online collaboration with co-workers.

People in cities and urban areas report more loneliness than those in sparsely populated rural areas, according to Gallup.

Residents of New England (20%) report the highest level of loneliness across nine U.S. regions, followed by the Middle Atlantic and East North Central regions (17%), each of which has high levels of urbanicity and older populations.

The Mountain region, which is more sparsely populated and overall consists of younger residents, has the lowest loneliness level of 14%.

The most recent results, obtained Feb. 21-28, 2023, are based on a web survey of 5,167 U.S. adults living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia as a part of the Gallup panel. For results based on this sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is about plus or minus 1.7 percentage points for percentages around 50% and about plus or minus 1.3 percentage points for percentages near 10% or 90% at the 95% confidence level, design effect included. For reported subgroups such as by age or income, the margin of error is larger, typically plus or minus 3-4 percentage points.

These data are a part of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index.