How Loneliness Affects Healthy Life Expectancy through Disability: Insights from France and Japan
Authors: Yvanna Simon, Yuka Minagawa, Karine Pérès
Yvanna Simon has been contributing to Innovcare through various WPs and has spent time in Japan in 2025 for a joint study between Innovcare partners University of Bordeaux and Sophia University – about loneliness’s impact on healthy life expectancy.
As an early career researcher, this field study is of paramount importance as it encapsulates the core of the project, that is, the French-Japanese comparison regarding innovative “solutions” to ageing societies.
More specifically, the topic of loneliness being one of the driving forces of Innovcare’s ecosystem (via other projects like Hilausenior and Senior Solitudes), her research shed light on cultural, social and policy differences on loneliness and aging, to help understand different “feelings” of solitude, different impact on health for older adults, etc.
Within this collaboration, she carried out a research mobility at the Institute of Comparative Culture, Sophia University in Tokyo, under the supervision of Pr Yuka Minagawa, associate professor of sociology from September 15 to november 15, 2025. She also benefitted from the German Institute on Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo.
Her study investigates the impact of loneliness on disability-free life expectancy, with a comparative approach between France and Japan. Her hypothesis, before being on site, was that “while France struggles to develop a structured policy to combat loneliness, other countries have taken more proactive steps in this area. This is notably the case in Japan, where significant measures have been implemented through dedicated public policies to address loneliness“.
The key take aways of her field stay are available here:
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Sébastien Lechevalier (January 14, 2026). How Loneliness Affects Healthy Life Expectancy through Disability: Insights from France and Japan. INNOVCARE. Retrieved February 14, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15hu0










