Aging & Social Change: Tenth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

India is home to one-fifth of the world’s population, which includes not only the youth bulge that places the country in one of the most advantageous spots in terms of demographic transition but also constitutes one-eighth of the world’s elderly. Though the elderly’s proportion in total population may not be as high as in the relatively developed nations, the inevitable rapid increase in their numbers in the near future and their sheer numbers (104 million) pose a huge challenge for the Indian Government with constrained fiscal capacity in meeting their social security needs. Family and adult children—the traditional sources assuring old-age security seem to be disappearing and the problem is graver for poverty-stricken elderly, who due to deteriorating health fail to earn and have no financial resources to ensure subsistence living. Hence, it becomes the onus of the Government to extend a social protection floor for the greying population. This paper provides an exhaustive review of the social security schemes of the Central and State Governments in the Indian context for elderly providing evidence on coverage and utilization rates and the extent of socioeconomic disparity therein. Two nationally representative large-scale household surveys for 2004-05 and 2011-12, namely, National Sample Survey (healthcare rounds) and Indian Human Development Panel Survey have been employed in the present study. Apart from bi-variate tabulations, concentration index and heckprobit regression model have been employed to understand inequality and socio-economic determinants of elderly participating in various social protection schemes.