IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/irapec/v26y2012i1p111-124.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Widowhood and health of elderly in India: examining the role of economic factors using structural equation modeling

Author

Listed:
  • Manoj K. Pandey
  • Abhay Kumar Jha

Abstract

Evidence on the association between widowhood and health is widely available in the literature. However, there is a dearth of analysis on the mechanism through which widowhood affects the health status of an individual, particularly in old age, specifically whether widowhood among the elderly affects their health through their economic conditions. This paper purports to establish both the direct and indirect effects of widowhood on self-reported health status among aged Indians. We examine the mediating effect of economic factors such as income, labor force participation, extent of economic independence and other economic factors in the relationship between widowhood and health status. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is employed to test specific hypotheses. We use unit level 60th round data for the year 2004 surveyed by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO). The results confirm that poor economic conditions have a mediating effect on the relationship between widowhood and health and, therefore, any policy to reduce the effect of widowhood on health must be based on economic factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Manoj K. Pandey & Abhay Kumar Jha, 2012. "Widowhood and health of elderly in India: examining the role of economic factors using structural equation modeling," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 111-124, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:irapec:v:26:y:2012:i:1:p:111-124
    DOI: 10.1080/02692171.2011.587109
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02692171.2011.587109
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/02692171.2011.587109?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:ilo:ilowps:455325 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. S. Irudaya Rajan, 2006. "Population Ageing and Health in India," Working Papers id:492, eSocialSciences.
    3. Rajan, Irudaya., 2010. "Demographic ageing and employment in India," ILO Working Papers 994553253402676, International Labour Organization.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Akhtar, Pervaiz & Tse, Ying Kei & Khan, Zaheer & Rao-Nicholson, Rekha, 2016. "Data-driven and adaptive leadership contributing to sustainability: global agri-food supply chains connected with emerging markets," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(PB), pages 392-401.
    2. Megan Reed, 2020. "The labor force participation of Indian women before and after widowhood," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 43(24), pages 673-706.
    3. Manoj K. Pandey, 2013. "Elderly's Health Shocks and Household's Ex-ante Poverty in India," ASARC Working Papers 2013-01, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Manoj K. Pandey, 2013. "Elderly's Health Shocks and Household's Ex-ante Poverty in India," ASARC Working Papers 2013-01, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.
    2. Akshaya Kumar Panigrahi, 2009. "Determinants of Living Arrangements of Elderly in Orissa: An Analysis," Working Papers 228, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    3. Nataraj, Manikantha & Bhattacharya, Soham, 2020. "Bitter Convergence: Contemporary Crisis of Labour in Rural West Bengal," MPRA Paper 103363, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Husain, Zakir & Ghosh, Saswata, 2010. "Is health status of elderly worsening in India:A comparison of successive rounds of National Sample Survey data," MPRA Paper 25747, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Tannistha Samanta & Feinian Chen & Reeve Vanneman, 2015. "Living Arrangements and Health of Older Adults in India," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 70(6), pages 937-947.
    6. Social Policy and Population Section, Social Development Division, ESCAP., 2011. "Asia-Pacific Population Journal Volume 26, No. 2," Asia-Pacific Population Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 26(2), pages 1-92, June.
    7. Social Policy and Population Section, Social Development Division, ESCAP., 2010. "Asia-Pacific Population Journal Volume 25, No. 2," Asia-Pacific Population Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 25(2), pages 1-144, November.
    8. Chandrima Chatterjee & Narayan Chandra Nayak & Jitendra Mahakud, 2022. "Magnitude and determinants of inpatient health expenditure among the elderly in India," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(3), pages 1402-1420, May.
    9. Manoj K. Pandey, 2009. "Poverty and Disability among Indian Elderly: Evidence from Household Survey," ASARC Working Papers 2009-09, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.
    10. Sanjeev Bakshi & Prasanta Pathak, 2016. "Aging and the Socioeconomic Life of Older Adults in India," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(1), pages 21582440156, January.
    11. Preeti Dhillon & Laishram Ladusingh, 2013. "Working life gain from gain in old age life expectancy in India," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(26), pages 733-762.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:irapec:v:26:y:2012:i:1:p:111-124. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CIRA20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.