Factors Associated with Food Insecurity among Older Adults in India: Impacts of Functional Impairments and Chronic Diseases

Abstract

Food security is an important agenda in MDG goals for people of all age groups irrespective of socio-economic strata in all developing and developed countries. For India, with increasing hunger index, provision of food security among older adults comes out to be a rising concern and matter of discussion under hunger eradication programmes and policies. The study concentrated on prevalence of food insecurity among population aged 60 and above in India and their associated health factors controlling the level of food insecurity. The data used for the research is taken from a nationally representative survey, Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI), Wave I (2019–2020) with a sample of 31,464 people aged 60 and above all over India. The outcome variable of food insecurity is made with composite scores from 5 sets of questions and made a binary variable of whether the respondent is food secure or insecure. Descriptive and bivariate analysis are performed to understand the correlation between the food insecurity and associated explanatory variables, with special focus on various types of functional impairments and chronic diseases. Through binary logistic regression models, the likelihood of food insecurity under different vulnerable conditions are analysed. The result describes 10.6% of older population aged 60 years and above of India experience food insecurity especially in rural areas (12.6%). Older adults living alone, in rural areas, with poor household income, with multimorbidity and functional impairments are more susceptible to be food insecure in India. With increasing number of functional limitations, the likelihood of being food insecure increases around 1.6 times. While presence of multimorbidity increases food insecurity; individual diseases like diabetes and hypertension negatively affects food insecurity among older adults.