Gender differences in the long-term care of older parents: evidence from India

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Elderly care
• gender issues
• informal care
• Indian studies
• population aging

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.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI [grant numbers 15K17075, 15KK0083], RISTEX, JST, and the Murata Science Foundation.