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God’s Own Country redefined: It’s green & geriatric

Kerala’s Declining Birth And Death Rates Creating Imbalance; State Has More Females Than Males

AVISITOR driving through Pathanamthitta district in south Kerala, crowded with ATMs, premium car showrooms and swanky jewelry outlets, may be forgiven for mistaking it as a land of young and upwardly mobile people. However, the demographic reality of the district lies in the less noticeable signposts: A string of hospitals, plentiful medical shops and a number of old-age homes.
Welcome to the heartland of an ageing society that is Kerala, and perhaps the most-acute case of societal ageing in the whole country. A Planning Commission-UNDP study prepared by the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) here and coordinated by the state planning board reveals that 14.6% of Pathanamthitta’s population is over 60.
Pathanamthitta also leads the state, and perhaps the country, in the old-old (above 70 years) and the oldest-old (above 80 years) with 6.8% and 2.1% of its population, respectively, falling in these two brackets.
Pathanamthitta’s story may present the most severe picture of an ageing society, but the district is also representative of the general direction of the state’s demography. While Kerala’s birth rate (per 1,000 population) declined from 31 in 1970 to 14.7 in 2007, its death rate also declined in the same period from 9 to 6.8, contributing to an age pyramid that has a shrinking base (of children) and a swelling top (of senior citizens).
The ageing population has also brought with it a new gender dimension: Kerala is one of a handful of states which has more females than males, but in the ageing society of the state the number of elderly females is considerably higher than those of males owing to the higher life expectancy among females. In 2001, for instance, as many as 59% of women in the 60-plus group had lost their husbands as against only 10% of men who were widowers.
Social scientists feel that one reason for the number of widowers being small is the higher incidence of remarriage among widowers, as against the remarriage of widows. What is more certain is that older women in the state are doubly marginalized due to the joint effect of ageing and widowhood.
Pathanamthitta happens to be one of the leading beneficiaries of NRI remittances, and so the senior citizens of the district may be relatively better off, but majority of seniors in Kerala face the challenging odds of dependencies and healthcare expenses.