Joint Families Fragment, Elderly Bear the Cost

Synopsis

The centuries-old joint family structure in India is still in the process of transforming to smaller, nuclear households, largely as a result of urbanization, career mobility and declining fertility rates. The decline is permanent and not cyclical, as the census and health survey data show and will create new welfare pressures, as a growing number of elderly people are becoming isolated and away from the support of informal family networks.

The Data on Family Structure

The data from all over the country indicates that the nuclear family has become the majority of families in India. The figures from Census of India 2011, reveal that nuclear families formed nearly 70 per cent of all the households across the country, while joint and extended families accounted for only about 20 per cent – the share of nuclear households is even higher in urban areas.

This is supported by health survey data as well: The proportion of nuclear families in India is 58.2 per cent according to NFHS-5 data (2019-21).

The change has not been linear in all respects, however. Simple stories of inexorable nuclearization are complicated by Census numbers showing the proportion of nuclear families as a proportion of all families actually decreasing slightly over the 10 year period between 2001 and 2011, from 70.34 per cent to 70.11 per cent, while numbers of people living alone (a proxy for one-person households) rose from 6.8 million to 9.04 million.

Rising isolation and falling fertility

The structural change is being exacerbated by demographic change. The total fertility rate has dropped from 2.9 in 2005 to 2.0 in India in 2011, which is still above 6.0 in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Add to that the increasing longevity of life (71 years for men and 74 years for women) and India's ageing population (currently around 7 per cent of the population), and the country is fast finding itself in a state of eldercare deficit.

Nuclear families have taken the place of a joint family and as children become adults and leave for cities and countries, older parents are left alone or with fewer adults to share care responsibilities.

The vulnerability of this kind has been quantified in recent research. Nearly one in five elderly Indians (19 per cent) reside without a spouse and almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of the elderly respondents who were surveyed said they felt financially insecure, while only 29 per cent said they had access to social security schemes and pensions.

An institution in transition not collapse

The sociologists warn us from interpreting this change as a new break down. In India, nuclear families always existed alongside joint families and in the past, they broke up after the death of the patriarch and became nuclear families again in the next generation only to be joined together as joint families once more.

However, what has changed over the past few decades, researchers say, is the extent and nature of nuclear family formation.

It's worth noting, however, that family structure is also associated with economic status, and this combination makes for a nuanced urban-poor story.

One study of the demographic analysis revealed that homes with a higher socio-economic status, such as those that have agricultural land or business property, are more likely to have joint housing than nuclear ones.

Outlook

As urbanisation grows and youth migration increases, the gradual disappearance of the joint family's inherent social security role may exacerbate India's fledgling formal social security system, which is only just starting to be met at a large scale by policy makers and researchers of public health.