Widow Discrimination and Family Caregiving in India: Evidence from Microdata Collected From Six Major Cities

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to address the lack of a region-wide view of widow discrimination in India, the home of 42 million widows. This study analyzed the household data collected in face-to-face interviews from January to March of 2011 in six major Indian cities. It was revealed that widow discrimination does not prevail across the nation. That is, this research did not deny the existence of traditional widow discrimination in some areas but demonstrated that this phenomenon does not represent the whole nation if we focus on the widows’ old age and the treatment by their families.

KEYWORDS:

• widowhood
• discrimination
• aging society
• Indian studies
• microdata analysis