Ageing in India: an overview

Type Working Paper - Radix International Journal of Research in Social Science
Title Ageing in India: an overview
Author(s)
URL http://rierc.org/social/paper249.pdf
Abstract
"Ageing" encompasses all the biological changes that occur over a lifetime. "Getting old", on the other hand, is a social concept and slightly related to the biological process of ageing. Ageing is related to socioeconomic changes that comprise emergence of nuclear families, smaller number of children per couple, greater longevity, physical separation of parents from adult children as a result of rapid urbanization and age-selective rural-urban migration, together with the changing values of younger generations against the older ones. Ageing of population is primarily the result of two factors - reductions in fertility and mortality. The number of elderly in the developing countries has been growing at a phenomenal rate. The two major population giants of Asia are India and China, because they are sharing a significant proportion of this growing elderly population. Advancing age seems to bring meaningless misery mainly the elderly have been neglected and by passed by modern society. This makes it necessary to look into the various aspects of their problems social, economic, psychological, health and other allied aspects. Keeping in mind the rapid social and economic changes and their implications on ageing of human population the present paper examines the following in the context of India: • Demographic profile of aged • Socio-Economic and health conditions of the aged • Major conclusions and suggesting policy implications. Mainly secondary data (Census, NSS Surveys etc.) has been used for analysis.

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