Working Papers

Elderly persons living in the hilly regions face the problems of disadvantaged natural endowment and reduced individual functionality. Tackling poverty by focusing on the elderly population in hilly regions could be one step. Addressing the issue of elderly in hills require a realistic definition of the hilly region itself. In the first part of the paper, we provide a critical review of the existing definitions on a??hilly regionsa?? and a??elderly groupsa??. The focus of the paper is to provide estimates for the quality of life of the elderly persons in hilly regions. As expected, for the period of 2004-05, old age income poverty is higher in all agro-climatic regions of India, except the western dry regions. In four agro-climatic regions old age poverty is worrying: Eastern Plateau and Hills, Islands, Gujarat Coast Plains and Hills, and Eastern Himalayas. We have examined four domains of quality of life - marital status, dependency status, living arrangements and work status a?? to understand the dynamics of poverty among the elderly population in the hilly regions of India. Out of these, pattern of dependency reported and living arrangements of the elderly people in hilly areas are more or less in tune with the national scenario as the pattern of informal family care remains almost same, be it hills or plains. But, in the case of marital status and work status, while in some states there is convergence between general population level and hill population, in many states there is huge variation. The variation on marital status could be because of mortality and life expectancy differences. Elderly persons in the hills of some states work more compared to other states; this could be a reflection of forest dependency and lack of social protection.