tailieunhanh - ADULTS 60 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER

Here we tried to map the dependency among aged in India. This is done across four sub groups, Rural Male, Rural female, urban male and urban female. In India in both categories of full and partial dependency, more than 80 percent of the women fall. In the national level more than 70 percent of the elderly are fully dependent in both female categories in both rural and urban areas ( and ) while it is just over 30 in the case of men ( and ). Kerala is the toper in the Rural male section with more than 43% are. | 9 Adults 60 years of age and older Introduction Background The demographic situation For the purposes of this report the term elderly is applied to those aged 60 years and over who represent the fastest-growing segment of populations throughout the world. In developing countries the percentage of elderly tends to be small although the absolute numbers are often large in 1990 there were more than 280 million people aged 60 or over 58 of the world s elderly living in less developed regions. The proportion of elderly is rising more rapidly in developing countries than in developed ones by the year 2020 it is expected that almost 70 of the world s elderly people will be in developing countries with the absolute number exceeding 700 million compared with 318 million in the more developed regions 7 . Factors responsible for this changing pattern of population aging include a rapid decline in both fertility and premature mortality 2 . Declining fertility is particularly apparent in some developing countries such as China Cuba and Uruguay although fertility levels in others such as Bangladesh Kenya and Zaire remain high 5 . A clear example of population aging is provided by China. Since the founding of the People s Republic of China in 1949 the average life span of the Chinese has increased from 35 to 70 years. A rapid decline in fertility in the past 10 to 15 years has resulted in a large reduction in the proportion of the population under 15 years in addition to the large increase in the numbers of elderly 4 . Within the older population the numbers over 80 years of age are increasing the most rapidly and will grow significantly faster than numbers of those between 60 and 70 years during the next few decades. Other demographic changes that accompany population aging are sex differences in longevity urbanization and the composition of the labour force. In most countries older women outnumber older men and the percentage of women in each age group is steadily .