Functional Disability Status among the Elderly Persons and its Predictors in Kerala and Maharashtra: An Analysis of BKPAI, 2011 Data

This paper examines the magnitude of functional disability among the elderly persons and its predictors in Kerala and Maharashtra. It is measured with Lawton and Brody's Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) Scale by assigning scores to elderly persons' ability to do or not eight day-to-day activities by adopting correlation and multiple linear regression techniques. In both the states the magnitude of functional disability status of the elderly has shown an increasing trend with an increase in their current age, whereas such pattern has decreased with an increase in their years of schooling. Further, while the likelihood of functional disability among the elderly noted to be much lower among those who are working for wages and self-reported health status as fair / good, such likelihood is observed to be higher among those who are co-residing with children / others than their respective counterparts (p<0.001 for all cases). Place of residence, gender, marital status, wealth index of households, number of chronic morbidities and physical disability index have also exhibited their independent net effects on the functional disability of the elderly, but differentially across the states.