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ABSTRACT
This paper examines gender differences in the long-term care of older parents in India by studying the expected provision of care by married sons and daughters. Gender differences in long-term care are important, as the sociocultural environment of India shapes the role of married children. While married sons are expected to provide long-term care for their biological parents, married daughters have limited scope to do so, a tendency that was revealed through our data from Osaka University’s ‘Preference Parameters in India, 2011.’ Other family members are also expected to play a significant role in parental care, while neither gender expects their parents to rely on professional long-term care. This paper contributes to the scarce empirical evidence on long-term care for older parents by married children, as opposed to previous research that has focused on the division of caregiving activities between sons and daughters in general.
Acknowledgements
This research used microdata from the Preference Parameters Study of Osaka University’s twenty-first Century COE Program ‘Behavioral Macrodynamics Based on Surveys and Experiments’ and its Global COE project ‘Human Behavior and Socioeconomic Dynamics.’ We acknowledge the program/project contributors: Yoshiro Tsutsui, Fumio Ohtake, and Shinsuke Ikeda.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Although the term ‘elderly’ may be considered stereotypical and have a negative connotation in the US and some other countries, in Indian culture, the term is used to show respect.
2 Only government agencies, large corporations, and certain other types of organizations have pension programs in India.