HEALTH STATUS OF ELDERLY WOMEN IN SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXT IN PUNJAB, PAKISTAN

The study was aimed at identifying socio- economic and cultural characteristics of the respondents and to investigate the impact of demographic factors (i.e. family income, housing/living arrangements, nutritional status) on the health status of the elderly women Punjab province of Pakistan. In this regard, Multistage Random Sampling Technique was used. Both independent and dependent variables were measured by operationalzing and constructing the indexation. Analysis of data was made on the basis of uni-variate and bi-variate analysis. Mean age of the women was 69.4, around 35.0% were ‘widows’, 94.8% were living with their married/unmarried children. Only 13.4% of the elderly women and 26.6% of their husbands were literate. Majority of sample women (56.6%) were living in low housing category. Statistical test indicated that the age of the elderly women was inversely related with the health status. Results of ordinal regression analysis also showed that family income, housing/living arrangements, nutritional status, social support and social network had highly significant influence on the health status of the elderly women.