Table 4.

Demographic characteristics of the included studies

Researchers	Ethnicity	Education	Health status	Living situation	Widowed	Financial status
Agrawal and Keshri (2014), INDIA	Indian	Some of the sample had a high school education and all had completed middle school	Mental disorder, diarrhoea, fever of unknown origin, tuberculosis, whooping cough, kidney disease, skin diseases, gastritis, other communicable diseases, cataract, eye diseases, joint and bone disorders, asthma, diabetes mellitus, respiratory diseases including the ear, hypertension and other non‐communicable diseases	Living with children and other relatives	NM	Economically dependent older widows reported a greater prevalence of morbidities compared with economically independent older widows
Burns et al. (2015), AUSTRALIA	NM	A substantial number left school between the age of 13–14 years (47%), 15–16 (31%), with 19% leaving school after the age of 16 years	Depression, no measurements of physical health or diseases	NM	Widowed for 4 years prior to the baseline observation	NM
Carr et al. (2014), USA	NM	Educational attainment was 11.7 years	Depression, anxiety, despair, no measurements of physical health or diseases	NM	NM	NM
DiGiacomo et al. (2013), AUSTRALIA	NM	NM	Depression, anxiety, and stress. At least one chronic condition	The participants had an average of two children, five widows had no children	2–47 months since the loss in the 1st interview, 8–53 in the 2nd and 13–59 in the 3rd	NM
Ghesquiere et al. (2013), USA	White 84.7%	44.2% of the sample had no high school education, 28.4% had a high school education, 17.6% had some college education and 9.8% had completed their college education	Depression, grief, no measurements of physical health or diseases	NM	NM	NM
Jeon et al. (2013), SOUTH KOREA	Korean	79.7% of the sample had an elementary school education or less	Depression, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, lung disease, heart problems, stroke, arthritis, and gastrointestinal maladies in addition to difficulties in performing activities of daily living	NM	NM	Widows have significantly lower levels of economic and social activity. Widowers reported a higher average monthly income than widows
Panagiotopoulos et al. (2013), AUSTRALIA	White	The sample included individuals with higher educational attainment	Depression, loneliness. Well‐being (self‐rated health), no information on diseases	105 of the participants lived alone, 13 lived with their children, three with relatives, friends	British‐born widows had been widowed for 14 years. Greek‐born widows had been widowed for 12 years	NM
Perkins et al. (2016), SOUTH KOREA	Korean	31.3% of the sample had no education, 21.8% had <5 years, 32.5 had 6–10 years and 14.4% had over 11 years of education	Mental disorder, hypertension, diabetes, asthma, arthritis	71% of the widowers lived with their children. 72.6% of the widows lived with their children	4% of widowers had been widowed for 0–4 years, 4% for 5–9 years, 6% for 10 years of more. Among widows, 14% had been widowed for 0–4 years, 13% for 5–9 years and 34% for 10 years or more	NM
Spahni et al. (2015), SWITZERLAND	White	The participants had completed secondary (58%), tertiary (28%) or primary (14%) level education	Depression, hopelessness, loneliness. No measurements of physical health or diseases	NM	The sample had been widowed for a maximum of 5 years	NM
Tiedt et al. (2016), USA	Japanese	NM	Depression, heart diseases, cancers, cerebrovascular ailments, high blood pressure, respiratory illnesses, digestive illnesses, diabetes, renal/urinary tract ailments, ailments of the liver/gall bladder, arthritis, chronic back pain, fractures/fissures, other fractures, and osteoporosis. Difficulties in performing the activities of daily living	NM	32% of the sample was widowed at baseline	NM
Xu et al. (2017), USA	Chinese	41.1% of the sample had some form of education	Mental health, general health	62.1% of the participants lived with their children, 1.9% did not have any children, 13.2% only had sons, 7.1% only had daughters, and 77.8% had both sons and daughters	NM	60.9% of the participants were financially stable. 56.9% received financial support from their children
Zhou and Hearst (2016), CHINA	Chinese	NM	Depression, difficulties in performing the activities of daily living	Most of the participants lived with their children	5.7% had been widowed for less than a year and 71.9% had been widowed for over 5 years	40% of the participants relied on their children as the main source of financial support

NM: not mentioned.