Frailty, activity participation, and welfare: An analysis using SHARE data

Population ageing has become a pressing issue in the European Union, where the share of older individuals (aged 65 or more) is projected to reach almost 30% of the total population by 2050 (Eurostat 2019). Frailty represents a condition of increased vulnerability among older people, implying a worsening of the risk of adverse health outcomes following losses in one or more domains of the human functioning (Bessa et al., 2018). Thus, a proper understanding of the determinants of frailty can support the identification of policies for healthy ageing, further providing information on the role that institutions can play to this end. Despite this, the role played by some specific factors in influencing elderly’s frailty, both at the micro and at the macro-level, is still to be fully understood. At the micro-level, a key missing piece concerns the role of social networks and activity participation in affecting frailty trajectories. We explore how social connectedness and activity participation predict individual frailty trajectories.