Socio- Economic background of the female inmates of elderly homes in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Population ageing is a phenomenon that occurs due to the lower death rate and lower birth rate. Due to the decrease of death and birth rates, ageing is a result of the demographic transition. Among the Asian countries, Sri Lanka has come to the first place, which is having a higher rate in the demographic transition. There is a 13.2% of elderly dependency ratio in Sri Lanka according to the newest reports (2015) of Census of Statistics. So as to that this study aimed to investigate the Socio and Economic factors which influenced those elderly women to be at the elderly homes special reference to Iring Thilakarathna elders home in Imbulgoda. Simple random sampling method has used as the sampling technique in order to select 25 elderly women as the sample. A questionnaire, which had 19 questions, has used to find the factors, which influenced them to stay in elderly home such as poverty, no one to care, misbehavior of their laws, freedom etc. Statistical techniques such as tables, graphs, percentages, Chi-square test and correlation etc. have been used to analyze the data. According to findings most of them were poor in their economic situation and they do not like to bother their children as well. The majority of those elderly women were in the age group of 70-80 and they believe staying in an elderly home allowed them to keep away from the problematic background of their home. According to the results, specially the attitude problems of their children and their lives styles have thrown their older mothers to the such a place and they have created a background that those mothers are loneliness and helpless though they have number of children.