BURDEN OF CARE GIVING ACTIVITY TO THE OLDER FAMILY MEMBER

Institutionalization of family member is still not acceptable by major proportion of society. In absence of universal health and social security system families are the foremost sources of support and care for needed family... [ view full abstract ]

Institutionalization of family member is still not acceptable by major proportion of society. In absence of universal health and social security system families are the foremost sources of support and care for needed family member. This study mainly focuses on the self-reported health of caregiver by different type of care giving activity, and to measures the burden of care giving activity to the older caregiver family member. SAGE Wave-1 data had been used, during 2007 to 2008 data were collected in six representative states; Assam Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar-Pradesh and West Bengal. This study is based on 914 cases, only on the main caregiver to the adult family members. Socio-demographic characteristics and different type of care giving activity were used as independent variable whereas self-reported health (good, moderate and bad) and burden of care giving activity is used as dependent variable. For measuring care giving burden 10 item 5 point scale has been used, average covariance of the scale is .499 and reliability coefficient of the scale is 0.9129. This scale ranges between 10 to 50 pints. Descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression had been used for analysis. Caregivers providing financial and social help reported moderate self-reported health relative to good health is 0.171 & 0.248 times less if other others variables held constant in the model. Caregiver not providing financial and social care is 0.605 (p<0.05) and 0.774 (p<0.01) times less likely to reported bad health compare to good self-reported health respectively. Caregivers not giving physical care are 0.404 (p<0.1) times less likely to report for bad self-reported health than those who are giving. As expected caregiver providing financial and health related care are reported to have more burden than others type of care giving activity. Overall care givers burden of care giving is varies by type of care.