Determinants of Living Arrangements of Lesotho's Elderly Female Population

Abstract

Abstract The paper addresses the demographic and socioeconomic correlates of living arrangements of women aged 60 years and over in Lesotho using the 1996 Census of Lesotho data file. Simple cross-tabular and multivariate techniques are applied to the household distribution of the census. The results show that a majority of elderly women in the country are widows, live in the rural areas, have had little education, and dwell in extended family households of which a significant proportion of them are the head. The findings further indicate that the age of the women's surviving children, and advancing age of the elderly themselves are important factors contributing to kin coresidence of the Lesotho elderly female population. The propensity of coresidence is found to increase with advancing age, while higher levels of educational attainment have significant negative correlation with the likelihood of kin coresidence. A combination of fertility decline, migration, and urbanization puts the older women in a disadvantaged p osition since there are fewer adult children available to provide support and care, and there is no universal non- familial social security system. Key Words: Elderly, Lesotho, Women. Chuks J. Mba (i) Introduction and Rationale The significant achievements of global declines in infant and maternal mortality, reductions in fertility, decreases in infectious and parasitic diseases, as well as improvements in nutrition and education, have resulted in the numerical growth of elderly populations around the world (United Nations, 2001 a; World Health Organization, 2000). Simultaneously, the growth of elderly populations poses formidable challenges to national public policies because a society's needs change as its proportion of elderly persons increases (Moon and Mulvey, 1996; Scharlach, 1994). Defined as persons aged 60 years and over (United Nations, 2001 a), the world's elderly population is expected to rise from 606 million in 2000 to almost 2 billion by 2050, representing an increase of about 230 percent over the period. As a result of gains in life expectancy and declines in fertility, the older population in most countries is growing faster than the population as a whole. What is more, if the envisaged reductions in mortality and fertility occur as currently projected, population aging will inevitably become a universal phenomenon in Africa and all the other regions of the world in the coming decades (United Nations, 2001 a; 1 999a). Even so, the rapidly expanding numbers of elderly persons represent a social phenomenon without any historical precedent. Unfortunately, though, the phenomenon of population aging has been a prominent issue largely restricted to the developed economies of North America, Europe, and Asia. In many of these nations, intense public debates have been carried out on issues such as social security costs, health care provision, and educational investments, all of which have a strong direct correlation with the changing age structure of their populations. Available evidence indicates that policy options for responding to population aging through social security, pension, and health care systems reforms have been receiving increased attention in much of the developed world (United Nations, 2001a; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1998; Pampel, 1998; World Bank, 1994). What is yet to be widely appreciated is that population aging is also occurring in the developing world, particularly in Africa, and that the elderly populations in Africa and the other developing regions are growing much more rapidly than those in the economically advanced countries. Africa's aging populations are triggered more by the rapid fertility decline that is currently sweeping parts of the region (Vimard, 2000; Mbamaonyeukwu, 2000; Casterline, 1999; Chimere-Dan, 1998; Orubuloye, 1995; Blacker, 1994; Caldwell and Caldwell, 1993; Caldwell et al. …