Determinants of Living Arrangement Concordance among Older Adults in India

Less explored is the relationship between living arrangement concordance (the correspondence between the actual and preferred living arrangement) among the elderly and their wellbeing in developing countries. It is mainly due to the assumption that the actual living arrangement is a partial consequences of preference. However, there can be several constraints in achieving a perfect correspondence between the actual and the preferred living arrangements. This paper endeavors to examine the relationship between preferred and actual living arrangement, living arrangement concordance and their determinants among Indian elderly using survey data from the study on building knowledge base on ageing in India. The analysis reveals that despite majority of the elderly live in co-residence, preference data indicates the growing acceptance of living separately from children, especially among the better educated elderly. Besides this, the study also shows a mismatch between the preferred and actual living arrangement indicating discordance in living arrangement. Logistic regression analysis shows that living arrangement concordance is largely determined by the education of the elderly, their economic dependency and household wealth index. Unlike other studies, discordance is more among people from better socio economic strata suggesti