The cognitive consequences of social frailty: a mixed methods study of precarity and resilience among aging populations in India and Sweden

Globally, population ageing poses challenges for the sustainability of welfare and health systems, placing particular attention on the promotion of successful and healthy aging.

The maintenance of cognitive function is a crucial part of ageing well as older adults with better cognition enjoy better mental and physical health, are more engaged in productive behaviors, and can live independently.

Growing evidence shows that 12 modifiable risk factors account for 40% of worldwide poor cognitive health and subsequent dementias.

One risk factor, which has received particular attention during the Covid-19 pandemic, is summarized under the umbrella term ‘low social contact’.

Means to conceptualize or theorize low social contact varies greatly between studies and results on the association with cognitive health draw inconclusive pictures.

To generate a timely-relevant, comprehensive, systematic understanding of this risk factor, we propose an interdisciplinary mixed-methods project which aims to investigate the unexplored concept of ‘social frailty’ in both Sweden and India – countries which present two uniquely aging populations embedded in varying social, economic, cultural, and Covid-19 response environments.

Our objectives are to:understand the phenomenon of social frailty and to assess its association with a wider battery of cognitive health outcomes;examine how multiple material need insecurities and wider macro-level contexts intersect and affect the above association and to explore the lived experiences of such precarious life worlds;discover necessary and sufficient causal conditions for older adults’ resilience against social frailty.We will utilize data from two nationally representative surveys: the Swedish part of The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI), both covering 2017 – 2022/23, enabling distinct pre-, during-, and post-pandemic perspectives.

We will complement analyses with aggregated data at Swedish region and Indian state level. Qualitative analyses will be based on focus group discussion and interview data.

The project brings together a multidisciplinary team of 10 Swedish and Indian researchers from four leading institutions in the areas of public health and aging research.

This project aims to produce policy- and practice-relevant results which can inform social interventions to support cognition in old age, the global aging agenda, and sustainable development.