Table of contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................... 6
2. Data.............................................................................................................. 10
3. Social participation ....................................................................................... 12
3.1 Friendly Europe: frequency of social contacts .................................................12
3.2 Social participation in voluntary activities.........................................................16
3.3 Robustness of the results: comparison with the European Social Survey........20
3.4 Social participation makes people happy ........................................................24
4. Social isolation ............................................................................................. 27
4.1 An overview ....................................................................................................27
4.2 Social isolation by gender and age: it tends to increase with age, although there
is a relatively good informal support ......................................................................31
4.3 Social isolation is greater among the poor and the unemployed......................35
5. Conclusions.................................................................................................. 39
References....................................................................................................... 41