Chennai: Growing old is a lonely business anywhere, but more so in Tamil Nadu than elsewhere in the country. The state has the highest number of elderly people living on their own, especially elderly women.
Roughly one out of every 14 people aged over 60 in Tamil Nadu—7.5% to be precise—lives all alone. Compare that with the national average of 4% or one in 25. For old women, the situation is even worse. More than one in every nine (11.5%) has no companionship or support at home against the national average of 5.5%.
Women comprise more than three-quarters (78%) of the elderly people living all alone in the state. Of the four lakh elderly people living alone in the state, 3 lakh are women, the highest in the country. After TN, it is Andhra Pradesh that has the highest number and proportion of senior citizens leading lonely lives. There are 3.8 lakh elderly people living alone in Andhra Pradesh, of whom nearly 3 lakh are women.
In fact, across all regions in the south, the average number of elderly women living alone for every 1,000 elderly men living alone is much higher than the all-India figure of 2,300. In this category, Karnataka has the highest ratio, followed by Andhra Pradesh, TN, Kerala, Puducherry, Goa and Maharashtra, indicating that the pattern is pan-Deccan. However, the proportion of homes with elderly people in TN is the same as the all-India average. In most states, there are more elderly women than men while in TN they are almost equal. When it comes to the overall sex ratio of the 60+ population, TN’s figure is even lower than the all-India average, way below states like Orissa, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.
TN has the highest proportion of elderly (10%) next to Kerala, which has 11%. It is third when it comes to the absolute number of elderly people, nearly 60 lakh, after UP with 1.2 crore and Maharashtra with nearly 86 lakh.
Even among the metros, Chennai has the second highest proportion of elderly (8%), next only to Kolkata (10%).
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