Nine out of 100 Punjabis earn their daily bread from the sweat of their brow even after turning 80. Another 70 per cent of them don’t retire at all as the distance between both the ends compels them to work Underlining the severe “economic constraints” for the elderly in the State that force them to work even in their old age.
The report on the “Status of the Elderly in Punjab, 2011” by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is covering different dimensions of socio-economic ageing in the State which is “predicted to grey faster than most other Indian States due to demographic transition”.
The study, released by Chandigarh-based Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), aimed at drawing attention of all the major stakeholders including public officials, planners, policy makers, community leaders, international agencies, among others to some of those pertinent issues regarding changes in the state’s demography and resulting challenges in the form of a growing elderly population, said CRRID’s professor Aswini Kumar Nanda, one of the author of the report.
With the State’s population witnessing an increase from 13.55 million in 1971 to 27.74 million in 2011, the number of elderly (aged 60 years and above) in the State has also grew from 1.01 million to 2.87 million — constituting 10.3 per cent of the total State's population. “The current population projection suggests that the share of elderly population is expected to rise further,” stated the study — thanks to the improvements in living conditions and human health, reduction in overall mortality levels, longer life span, among others.
As per the findings of the study, the work participation rate in Punjab among the elderly is 21 per cent with 38 per cent men and five per cent women currently working. While almost half of the elderly men in the age group 60-69 years are currently working, nine per cent continue to work even beyond the age of 80 years, stated the study. Ninety five per cent of the elderly in the age group of 60-69 years are “main workers” — working for more than six months in a year, whereas nearly 91 per cent of the elderly in the rural and almost entirely in the urban areas work for more than four hours a day.
The study — data for which was collected in July-September in 2011 found that among the elderly workers, major occupation type is cultivators in which 24 per cent were engaged, “followed by other labour activities”. “Informal employment is the major type of employment undertaken by the elderly with 32 per cent of the urban elderly and 48 per cent of the rural elderly being informally employed.
Thirty two per cent of the elderly were self-employed. Surprisingly, elderly women in both rural and urban areas have a higher proportion of employment in the public sector as compared to elderly men,” revealed the study. The study maintained that the workforce participation among the elderly in the state is “predominantly influenced by economic compulsions” with 70 per cent of them working due to economic compulsions in the rural areas, and 48 per cent working out of choice in the urban locales.
Nine out of 10 elderly women were working due to various economic constraints, it added. What motivating them workIJ The study said that the stimulus to work “varied across their background attributes” — like age and living standards. The study pointed that the influence of economic or other compulsions as work motivators steadily declines from about 94 per cent among the poorest wealth quintile to about 56 per cent in the richest quintile.
Across social groups, a higher proportion of elderly from Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribes (ST) groups were working out of economic and other compulsions, with overall 65 per cent of the elderly working due to economic necessity and 35 per cent working out of choice. And those who are not working — 35 per cent men and 37 per cent women out of the current workforce, they pointed “old age” to be the major reason , followed by nearly 30 per cent of elderly men and women citing health problems as the reason for the same. More than a fifth of the elderly men and women had retired from work, it added.