Assessment of Physical and Mental Wellbeing of Elders: Evidences Based on Lasi Wave I Data

Anupama Singh, University of Lucknow, Lucknow

India is the largest population in the world with 140 million elderly (ageing 60+) that rose from 72 million in 2001. This number is projected to be 158.7 million in 2025 (UNDES, 2008), and to surpass the population of children under 14 years of age by 2050 (Raju, 2006). The average annual growth rate of this age group is three times the overall population growth rate of country. In 2019, India’s 60+ ageing population constituted 10 percent of its total population (NSO Report, 2021). In a society, elderly face different forms of social-economic and health challenges everyday. There are increasing health related issues such as increase in prevalence rate of non-communicable diseases involving cancer, respiratory and heart diseases and mental health issues like depression dementia, etc. Present research is an effort to study physical and mental health issues among elderly and associated factors using Longitudinal Aging Survey of India Wave I dataset. We have studied the impact of various socio-economic factors such as area of residence, ethnicity, education etc., on physical and mental health issues using Logistic regression. It is found that education, area of residence (rural/urban) and household type make substantial impact on the health of elders in India.

Keywords: Population Ageing, Older Adults and Intergenerational Relations, Data visualisation , Health and Morbidity

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