Socioeconomic Factors Associated with Anticipated Social Connectedness Under Dementia: Evidence from Japan

Dementia is associated not only with clinical and caregiving challenges but also with concerns about future social connectedness, social participation, and resilience. This study examines anticipated social connectedness under dementia, defined as respondents’ self-assessed confidence that they could remain connected to society if they were to develop dementia in the future, and its association with demographic, socioeconomic, and psychological characteristics in Japan. Using data from the 2026 wave of the Survey on Life and Money conducted among Rakuten Securities account holders, we analyze 20,352 respondents aged 18 to 86. Ordered probit models are used as the main specification, with a binary specification employed as a robustness check. The results show that unemployment is negatively associated with anticipated social connectedness under dementia, whereas household income is positively associated with it across several specifications. Family-related variables, including marital status and number of children, also show positive associations in some models, although their relevance differs across gender and age groups. The associations for household financial assets and myopic views of the future are less stable. These findings suggest that anticipated social resilience under dementia may be socially patterned and related to broader socioeconomic circumstances. However, because the analysis is based on cross-sectional survey data from securities account holders and the dependent variable captures self-assessed confidence rather than realized social connectedness among people living with dementia, the results should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects and should not be generalized mechanically to the broader population.