Raj, Maha offer best quality of life to elderly

New Delhi: Rajasthan and Maharashtra have emerged as the top-scoring states in the ‘aged states’ category, while Chandigarh and Mizoram have topped the rankings on Union territories and north eastern states respectively, a report on the quality of life for the elderly showed on Wednesday.

The report classifies ‘aged states’ as those with elderly population of more than five million. States with less than five million elderly people have been termed ‘relatively-aged’. The report identifies the regional patterns in ageing across states and provides a deeper insight of what is being done to support the elderly population.

The report’s index framework includes four ‘pillars’: financial well-being, social well-being, health system and income security; and eight ‘sub-pillars’: economic empowerment, educational attainment and employment, social status, physical security, basic health, psychological well being, social security and enabling environment.

The index created by the Institute for Competitiveness highlights that the best way to improve the lives of the current and future generations of older people is by investing today in the health, education and employment for the young.

The health system pillar shows the highest national average of 66.97, followed by 62.34 in social well-being. The financial well-being score is at 44.7, which is lowered by the low performance of 21 states across the education attainment and employment pillars, which has scope for improvement. Many states have performed particularly worse in the income security pillar because over half of them have a score below the national average of 33.03, which is the lowest across all pillars.

These pillar-wise analyses help states assess the state of the elderly population and identify existing gaps that obstruct their growth, says to an official statement.