Socio Economic Status of aged population residing in Shimla Hills of North India

Abstract

Socio-economic status is the foremost issue in the contemporary world, especially in the developing world. The socio-economic status in the rural areas is gradually improving over a period of time. The present study approaches the senior citizens (aged population) economic status of rural and urban areas of Shimla-the state capital of Himachal Pradesh. The study focuses on economic conditions like source of income, occupation, impact of literacy on income source. During this study, an attempt has been made to find out the actual socio-economic status of population of different income groups. A sample size of 150 was selected for conducting this study in rural as well as urban elderly population and the study is based on door to door data collection with the help of a suitable questionnaire. The collected data have been classified into four income groups and simple percentage method is followed to analyse the data. The results shows that in rural area 99.32% aged covered under monthly income between Rs 2000 to Rs 6000 as compared to only 34.55% urban in the income group. In urban area, non-significant difference in the income was noticed with a maximum 37.99% in a range of Rs 6000 to Rs 15000. Thus, only a few percentages of people in old ages have sufficient sources of income and can enjoy little better life rural areas.