Kerala’s dream-chasers leave their parents lonely

 

Kerala’s money-order economy, thriving on more than Rs. one lakh crore of foreign remittances from 2.5 million emigrants, is leaving a colossal social footprint in the form of exclusion of a huge number of the elderly in the State

The elderly make up 10.5 per cent of Kerala’s population of roughly 3.33 crore.
The national average is 8.6 per cent. Himachal Pradesh (9 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (8.8) come closest to Kerala in terms of their elderly population as percentage of the total

About 6% of the nearly three million elderly in Kerala lead lonely lives for various reasons, but mostly because their sons and daughters have migrated abroad, says a study on migration-induced exclusion of the elderly by the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Cochin University of Science and Technology.

The study revealed that the problem of lonely elders was more acute in central and southern Kerala while, while north Kerala, with its relatively more surviving vestiges of the joint family system, provided more comfort and emotional security to their elderly