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Exploring Potential Linkages between Social Support, Retirement and Subjective Wellbeing among Older Indians: Does it a Challenge to Policy Makers?

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Abstract

Subjective wellbeing is an important component of wellbeing that benefits people by influencing their subjective feelings. Using the Building Knowledge Base on Population Ageing in India (BKPAI 2011) survey data, the study attempts to investigate the linkages between social support and subjective wellbeing (SWB) among older adults of age 60 and above in India. The path analysis revealed that the social support have an indirectly effect on SWB through mediating role of family income, education, religion and financial status. The social support explained 23% of the variation in SWB. The structural equation model were performed to test the relationship between the latent variables divided into exogenous and endogenous, with the former affecting the latter. Study also tested the reliability of the questionnaire scores and its criterion and structural validity of SWB. The results confirm the validity is suitable for the multidimensional assessment of SWB. Using instrumental variables approach there is moderate evidence of positive correlation and endogenous regressors social support yield unbiased and consistent and effect of being involuntary retired has a negative on SWB, but the effect is not significantly different from zero. However, this study doesn’t found significant positive effect between retirement and SWB. In view of the findings, the study calls for devising policy implications that contribute to support and wellbeing research for future.

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Acknowledgements

We will be grateful to the editor, referees of the journal for their constructive comments which helped improve the quality of our manuscript. We have benefitted from presentation at 13th annual conference of Indian Association for Social Sciences and Health (IASSH), 2015, held at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. We are also grateful to the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore for ease of access to the data. This organization bears no responsibility for the analysis or interpretations that are presented in this paper. The authors wish to thank the anonymous referee of the journal for the comments on the draft of the paper.

Funding

This research received no grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Conceived and designed the research paper: HC, SS and BR; analysed the data: HC, BR; Contributed agents/materials/analysis tools: BR, HC; Wrote the manuscript: HC, BR, SS, Refined the manuscript: HC, BR, and SS.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Himanshu Chaurasia or Sunil Sarode.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Ethical Treatment of Experimental Subjects (Animal and Human)

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest has been provided. This study was based on a large dataset that is publicly available on population ageing in India conducted by the UNFPA in India with ethical standards being complied with including informed consent obtained from participants.

Appendix

Appendix

Subjective wellbeing (SWB) includes-

“How do you rate your general health condition?” on a three point scale; very, much, to some extent and not so much. It includes-.

a) Do you feel your life is interesting?

b) Compared with the past, do you feel your present life is?

c) On the whole, how happy are you with the kind of things you have been doing in recent years?

d) Do you think you have achieved in your life the standard of living and the social status that you had expected?

e) How do you feel about the extent to which you have achieved success and are getting ahead?

f) Do you normally accomplish what you wanted to accomplish?

g) Do you feel you can manage situations even when they do not turn out to be as expected?

h) Do you feel confident that in the case of a crisis (anything that substantially upsets your situation in life) you will be able to handle it or face it boldly?

i) The way things are going now, do you feel confident in coping with your future?

Table 8 Correlation matrix between Socio-economic and Socio-demographic variables
Table 9 Correlation matrix between items used in instrument variable approach
Table 10 Path analysis of subjective wellbeing of persons aged 60 years and above in India
Table 11 Ordered logistic regression of subjective well-being of persons aged 60 years and above in India
Table 12 Structural Equation Model of of subjective wellbeing of persons aged 60 years and above in India

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Chaurasia, H., Brajesh & Sarode, S. Exploring Potential Linkages between Social Support, Retirement and Subjective Wellbeing among Older Indians: Does it a Challenge to Policy Makers?. Ageing Int 43, 207–236 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-017-9317-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-017-9317-3

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