Labour Market Vulnerabilities and Health Outcomes: Older Workers in India

While India is fast catching-up to become an ageing society it poses in many ways a stiff challenge to the Indian governments. In the absence of a comprehensive social security provisioning and safety nets for the olds, they keep working to a much longer span of life and suffer from many serious diseases and disabilities. Using data from major health and labour surveys this paper tries to bring out the participation of elderly workers in various occupational categories and their health statuses to sketch a link between work and health risks. Wage employment tends to decline for the ageing population, forcing them to eke out their livelihood mostly from low quality self-managed employment. Those with higher levels of educational attainment are less likely to fall ill compared to the illiterates. Some of the occupational categories tend to make elderly more prone to ill health though the probability of suffering from tuberculosis goes up for all workers irrespective of the major activity groups. On the whole, the links between occupation and health risks come out sharply, suggesting health interventions to be made occupation-specific.