Zealand, the fourteen surveyed groups with the highest prevalence of loneliness most/all of the time in descending order are: disabled people, recent migrants, low income households, unemployed, single parents, rural (rest of South Island), seniors aged 75+, not in the labour force, youth aged 15–24, no qualifications, not housing owner-occupier, not in a family nucleus, Māori, and low personal income. Studies have found inconsistent results concerning the effect of age, gender and culture on loneliness. Much 20th century and early 21st century writing on loneliness assumed it typically increases with age. In high-income countries, on average, one in four people over 60 and one in three over 75 feels lonely. Yet as of 2020, with some exceptions, recent studies have tended to find that it is young people who report the most loneliness (though loneliness is still found to be a severe problem for the very old). There have been contradictory results concerning how the prevalence of loneliness varies with gender. A 2020 analysis based on a worldwide dataset gathered by the BBC found greater loneliness among men, though some earlier work had found the opposite, or that gender made no difference. While cross-cultural comparisons are difficult to interpret with high confidence, the 2020 analyses based on the BBC dataset found the more individualist countries like the UK tended to have higher levels of loneliness. However, previous empirical work had often found that people living in more collectivist cultures tended to report greater loneliness, possibly due to less freedom to choose the sort of relationships that suit them best. Increasing prevalence In the 21st century, loneliness has been widely reported as an increasing worldwide problem. In 2017, loneliness was labelled a growing "epidemic" by Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States. It has since been described as an epidemic thousands of times, by reporters, academics and other public officials. A 2010 systematic review and meta analyses had stated that the "modern way of life in industrialized countries" is greatly reducing the quality of social relationships, partly due to people no longer living in close proximity with their extended families. The review notes that from 1990 to 2010, the number of Americans reporting no close confidants has tripled. Worldwide though there is little historical data to conclusively demonstrate an increase in loneliness. Several reviews have found no clear evidence of an increase in loneliness even in the US. Professors