Living arrangements and family support of older people

Social institutions and the patriarchal system in India deprive women of taking the role of head of the household when their husbands are alive and most often, they have to depend on children once they become widows. We unravel these unwritten social norms conventionally practiced in terms of intergenerational co-residence of elderly females versus males with children in self or spouse support providing and in child headed support receiving households from the perspective of the elderly. Analysis of nationally representative samples of 15,649 females and 16,240 males 60 years and above revealed that co-residence in child headed households among elderly females is 53.6 percent as against 26.5 percent among elderly males. More than 70 percent of widowed or widower/divorced/separated elderly co-reside in child headed support receiving households. The vulnerable non-literate, economically dependent and physically immobile females are more likely to co-reside in child headed households than their male counterparts. About 56 percent of elderly males lived with children in self or spouse headed households indicating that children too benefit from parents particularly for housing.

The rise in the life expectancy level in India and particularly in the urban areas have raised concerns for caring the aged during the post retirement periods. However, not much has been achieved either in the policy front or in arousing consciousness in the public. Specialists belonging to different disciplinary backgrounds have mostly been raising issues pertaining to the macro implications of aging on the economy, society and demography. The socio-psychological implications of aging on the aged segment of the population and social security available for the aged have rather remained a neglected aspect.


The paper takes into account relationships of age with occupation, income, saving, insurance, crime, social problems, physical health, social support systems, retirement planning, cost of living, asset creation, intra family relations etcetera. The variables presented here are used to develop the social security index for the aged in order to undertake the city specific analysis. The study has also addressed the need for right policy perspectives for the aged by the way of suggesting interventions at different levels of government.

The present paper focuses on family support and social adjustment of elderly in rural Maharashtra. Issues like adjustment in various stages of life regarding self, health and social matters are explored and discussed under the sub domain of social adjustment. Further, the impact of various socio-economic factors on social adjustment is discussed in detail. Data for this study was collected from rural areas of Amravati district, Maharashtra using semi-structured interview schedule. 600 males and females were interviewed using systematic sampling technique. Multinomial logistic regression was applied to analyse the data collected from the field. The higher proportion of elderly living in joint families shows better social adjustment than those living in nuclear families or living alone. Marital status has significant influence on their social adjustment. The elderly who get family support and care are more socially adjustable than the elders with no family support. The family support system and level of social adjustment of elderly in rural Maharashtra seems to be good. However, there are elders who are not getting any kind of support from either from family or from the government and for them we need to have some sort of policy or support system to secure their welfare.

Declining fertility in China has raised concerns about elderly support, especially when public support is inadequate. Using rich information from the nationally representative China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) baseline survey fielded in 2011-12, we find that roughly 43% of Chinese aged 60 and over live with a child; living with a male child being strongly preferred. However another 31% have a child living in the same neighborhood and 13% in the same county; only 5% have the nearest child living outside the same county as the parent and another 8% have no living children. Single elderly men and women living in urban areas (mostly widows and widowers) are more likely to live with their children or have their children living nearby, as are urban elderly residents. Children with high levels of income are less likely to live with their parents or to live nearby, but if parents have higher income, one of their children is more likely to be living with them or nearby. We also find that among non-co-resident children, those living close by visit their parents more frequently and have more communications by phone, email, text messages and regular mail. On the other hand, children who live farther away are more likely to send financial and in-kind transfers and send larger amounts.

Matriliny is practised among nearly one million Khasi people living in Meghalaya Plateau in the Northeastern region of India. Descent and lineage in this system is from the mother’s clan line and ancestral property passes through the youngest daughter who is the custodian of ancestral property. The Khasi society exists as an island amidst a strong patriarchal Indian society and has survived till date in spite of modern forces constantly working against its continuance. The prevalent system has its unique living arrangements where the elderly segment looks for support and care. The paper aims at understanding the pattern of living arrangements among the Khasi people and study the health and gender dimensions of ageing in Khasi society under the influence of this unique social system. Based on data collected from selected Khasi villages in the plateau, the study presents the empirical reality confronting the matrilineal Khasis.

Objectives: To investigate the effects of total social networks and specific social networks with children, relatives and friends, and confidant on disability among the older persons in rural Uttar Pradesh, India. Berkman’s theoretical model of social relations linking to health is used to determine their applicability to the older persons in India.

Method: A sample of 600 older persons aged 60+ living in 12 villages in rural Uttar Pradesh was recruited using multi-stage random sampling. Two well known scales Activity of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activity of daily living (IADL) were used to assess disability in older persons. The effect of social network with children, relatives, friends and confidant on disability was analysed using multinomial logistic regression.

Results: After controlling for a range of health and personal factors, social network with friends and confidant were protective against developing ADL and IADL disability. Social sub-networks with children, and relatives did not have a significant protective against on the development of disability.

Conclusion: The findings have implications regarding the non-kin support particularly from friends in aging families and to provide elders with opportunities to interact with friends and confidant person.

Objectives: This study explores the association of specific social networks (children, relatives, friends and confidant) with depressive symptoms among older persons.

Method: A sample of 600 older persons aged 60+ living in the 12 village in the rural Uttar Pradesh was recruited using Multi-stage random sampling. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the composite international diagnostic interview scale. Berkman’s theoretical model of social relations linking to health is used to determine their applicability to the Indian older persons.

Results: Elderly people belonging to upper total social network had reported lowest depression (17 percent). However, older persons from low and mid total social network were 34 percent and 30 percent reported depression respectively. Multivariate analysis shows that, networks with ‘friends’ was only having statistically significant protective effect upon depression. Mid and upper category for ‘friends’ network versus the lower category appeared to be protective against depression. However, the specific network with children, relatives and confidant did not have significant effect on depression.

Conclusion: Intervention programs should be designed to promote the importance of strengthening non-familial social networks of older persons, particularly for those living alone.

Informal care is the primary elderly-support pattern in China, and women have taken the main responsibility of caregiving. A sharp decline in government support for care provision and the fast population aging have increased the care burden on the women in the family. With the data derived from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) and ordered-probit model, we try to examine the relation between hours of parental care and self-reported health of married women in urban China. Our results show that married women would report much worse health if hours caring for parent-in-law increase, with the probability of “Excellent” and “Good” health reduced, and the probability of “Fair” and “Poor’ health increased. It is possibly concluded that traditional patrilineal familial norms still play a role in shaping intra-household allocation in urban China as hour burden of caregiving for parent-in-law would significantly strengthen married women’s mental stress whereas taking care of own parents not. We should pay more attention to the negative impact of increasing parental care burden on the emotional and physical health and wellbeing of married women. Changes should be made to China’s existing eldercare policies, especially establishment of formal and inform support system to the women caregivers.

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

Population ageing is a global challenge, and understanding the dynamics of living arrangements in later life and their implications for the design of appropriate housing and long-term care is a critical policy issue. This paper investigates the dynamics of living arrangements amongst people aged 65 years old and over between 1991 and 2008, focussing on two types of accommodation: sheltered accommodation and residential care. The empirical research examines the rates and determinants of moving into sheltered accommodation and institutional care, using all 18 waves of the British Household Survey data and a discrete-time logistic regression model in order to model the probability of entering each type of accommodation. The paper shows that the factors associated with each of the two transitions in later life are different; for example age, health and marital status are significant determinants of an older person’s move into residential care, while the move into sheltered accommodation is in addition associated with an older person’s housing tenure and highest educational qualification. Such results indicate that the two kinds of transition may be more prevalent in different stages of the latter part of the life course, and have crucial implications for the design of future social care provision.