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Rotational Living Arrangement: Evidence from rural Barddhaman and Bakuda Author: Arpita Paul PhD Scholar, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, India Email: parpita19@gmail.com Introduction Elderly are often considered as burden in most of the developing countries where social security systems are non-existent or poorly developed and elderly are mostly supported by family for their sustenance. Income derived from savings, accumulated assets or private pensions are negligible for most of the elderly in developing countries. Hence, providing food, shelter and health care to the elderly becomes burden for the earning members of the family. At the same time, with the changing societal and familial norms there is sharp increase in nuclear family even in developing countries. In this scenario the living arrangement of elderly plays an important role in determining their health and well-being (Agrawal, 2012; Velkoff, 2001). As evidences suggest, the share of elderly who live alone has increased sharply in the recent decades in South-East Asian countries like Japan, China, Republic of Korea, and India (UN, 2005). India is a demographically diverse country where different states are at different stages of demographic
- transition. Indian states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab, West Bengal etc. have
significantly high proportion of elderly whereas states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh have large share of young population. And because of the age-structural transition and changing familial norms, the living arrangement of elderly is also facing transition in most of the states. Traditionally, in India, majority of the elderly live with their son though slowly but steadily this culture is changing. Many studies suggested that the proportion of elderly who are living alone or with their spouse has increased significantly (Paul & Verma, 2016; Rajan & Kumar, 2003). Although this trend is mostly experienced in urban area, especially, in the metro cities, rural areas are not untouched by it. Structure of the family is largely influenced by the needs and resources to fulfill those needs of the family members. Also, the attitude of taking up responsibilities plays a very crucial role in defining the family size. It‟s a difficult task to measure the attitude but the size of the family explains a lot about it. Numbers of sons, married children, age, health status, etc. are the various factors that determine the living arrangement of elderly. Rotational Living Arrangement Although the previous investigation clearly indicated that parents preferred to live with their children, the difficulties in modern societies (such as Westernization) sometimes disappointed elderly parents may raise various concerns in daily living and health care. Therefore, an alternative living arrangement for
- lder people has been initiated in India to meet the traditional expectation of family virtue from elderly
parents and the living conditions of modern societies, which is rotational living of parents with their adult children especially son‟s family in Indian context. As the number of nuclear families has increased sharply the responsibility of taking care of elderly parent is like a liabilities which is shared among the
- children. This particular system is termed here as „rotational living arrangement‟ which is a very new
phenomenon, particularly, in Indian context and it is also not much explored in other countries. We have found merely two studies which talk about the rotational living arrangement in context of few provinces
- f China (Kao, Chang, Huang, Tsai, & Chen, 2013; Thøgersen & Anru, 2008).