Rotational Living Arrangement: Evidence from rural Barddhaman and Bakuda Author: Arpita Paul PhD Scholar, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, India Email: parpita19@gmail.com Introduction Elderly are often considered as burden in most of the developing countries where social security systems are non-existent or poorly developed and elderly are mostly supported by family for their sustenance. Income derived from savings, accumulated assets or private pensions are negligible for most of the elderly in developing countries. Hence, providing food, shelter and health care to the elderly becomes burden for the earning members of the family. At the same time, with the changing societal and familial norms there is sharp increase in nuclear family even in developing countries. In this scenario the living arrangement of elderly plays an important role in determining their health and well-being (Agrawal, 2012; Velkoff, 2001). As evidences suggest, the share of elderly who live alone has increased sharply in the recent decades in South-East Asian countries like Japan, China, Republic of Korea, and India (UN, 2005). India is a demographically diverse country where different states are at different stages of demographic transition. Indian states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab, West Bengal etc. have significantly high proportion of elderly whereas states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh have large share of young population. And because of the age-structural transition and changing familial norms, the living arrangement of elderly is also facing transition in most of the states. Traditionally, in India, majority of the elderly live with their son though slowly but steadily this culture is changing. Many studies suggested that the proportion of elderly who are living alone or with their spouse has increased significantly (Paul & Verma, 2016; Rajan & Kumar, 2003). Although this trend is mostly experienced in urban area, especially, in the metro cities, rural areas are not untouched by it. Structure of the family is largely influenced by the needs and resources to fulfill those needs of the family members. Also, the attitude of taking up responsibilities plays a very crucial role in defining the family size. It‟s a difficult task to measure the attitude but the size of the family explains a lot about it. Numbers of sons, married children, age, health status, etc. are the various factors that determine the living arrangement of elderly. Rotational Living Arrangement Although the previous investigation clearly indicated that parents preferred to live with their children, the difficulties in modern societies (such as Westernization) sometimes disappointed elderly parents may raise various concerns in daily living and health care. Therefore, an alternative living arrangement for older people has been initiated in India to meet the traditional expectation of family virtue from elderly parents and the living conditions of modern societies, which is rotational living of parents with their adult children especially son‟s family in Indian context. As the number of nuclear families has increased sharply the responsibility of taking care of elderly parent is like a liabilities which is shared among the children. This particular system is termed here as „rotational living arrangement‟ which is a very new phenomenon, particularly, in Indian context and it is also not much explored in other countries. We have found merely two studies which talk about the rotational living arrangement in context of few provinces of China (Kao, Chang, Huang, Tsai, & Chen, 2013; Thøgersen & Anru, 2008).
The preference of living arrangements for older people depends upon the family resources and social participation. The lack of appropriate family resources to fulfill the intention for older people to live with adult children may result in elders living alone in their communities. The adverse health impact of solitary living for older people has been well recognized, but the health characteristics and benefits of rotational living with family for older people remained uncertain. In a rotational living arrangement, adult children may share their responsibilities of providing direct care for their parents to prevent them from living alone, but rotational living per se may cause some new stresses and challenges of care related to frequent changing living environments and unstable social networking (Kao et al., 2013). Therefore, the main objective of this study aimed to evaluate the social and health well-being of older people who were rotationally living with their family in India. This paper is a very first attempt of this kind for Indian context. This study will contribute to the existing literature of elderly living arrangement with exploring the social implications and motivations for the emergence of rotational living arrangement in elderly. Materials and Methods The data for this study was collected during May to November 2015 in two districts of rural West Bengal, India. Total sample of 322 elderly men and women were interviewed in 2 districts of West Bengal. 14 in- depth interviews were conducted to analyze the health and work status of elderly along with their living arrangement. Results and discussion A new trend in living arrangement of elderly was found in rural area of West Bengal, commonly known as the „Pali‟ (in local language) which means eating or living rotationally with son‟. This arrangement can be understood as a system where elderly‟s needs and requirements are taken care of by all his sons on rotation basis. The duration for which each son will provide food and other financial needs is pre-decided among children. The periods usually vary from one week to more than three months duration. In this arrangement, elderly may stay alone but eat rotationally wi th each son‟s family, or the elderly will be staying and eating alternatively with each son‟s family for a specified period of time. The basic characteristics of the elderlies in rotational living arrangement are mentioned in different tables which one can refer from APPENDIX section to understand the study population. This study found that those elderly who were living in this arrangement were not very happy or satisfied with it. Out of 14 elderly 8 said that they feel unwanted but since they are financially dependent on their children their decisions doesn‟t matter on the type of living arrangement. Elderly also told that their children took this decision for them and they were informed after the decision was made. This observation reflects that elderly does not have much decision making right. Some elderly said that they are treated like burdens by their children. On the other hand, six out of fourteen elderly who said that rotational living arrangement was good as they can have chance to live with their sons alternatively. One of them said “It is a good system as I get to eat different food every week”. The study found that the elderly were also satisfied with this arrangement as the financial needs were equally fulfilled by their children. This study also found that the financial support for meeting any health care need of the elderly was shared by all the sons. If elderly was suffering from any illness the expenditure incurred in the treatment will be divided equally among the children. Other basic needs of the elderly will be met by the child he or she is living at any given time.
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