Impact of development on loneliness among elderly women living alone in Chandigarh

Pages: 1114-1117
Bindu (Department of Sociology, Panjab University, Chandigarh)

In the era of development, elderly women living alone are facing problems. Due to development and migration, children move to other cities and starts living in the nuclear family set up. Here, elderly women who are physically and mentally dependent on their children are left behind. They face different type of problems in their day to day life, loneliness is one of them. Impact of development on loneliness has made the life of elderly women more vulnerable. The paper focused upon impact of development on loneliness among elderly women that are living alone. The main objectives of the study were to find out the profile of the elderly women and to highlight the impact of development on loneliness among elderly women living alone in the society. An empirical study was done through the non-probability sampling and 30 elderly women were selected with the help of snow ball method. Data was collected through interview schedule. It was found that a large number of the elderly women were facing a moderate level of loneliness followed by a complete loneliness. Thus, impact of development was reported by elderly women. It can be concluded that development is a process of social change which can affect the society positively as well as negatively. In the case of elderly women living alone, development has affected negatively as they face more loneliness.