Influence of Gender on Psychological Wellbeing among Elderly Working And Nonworking Respondents

Abstract

Retirement tends to be perceived by society as passivity, social withdrawal, and physical and mental decline. The fact that people in retirement have withdrawn from economic endeavor tends to lower the esteem in which they are held by the community even though the withdrawal may be forced upon the individual by reason of compulsory retirement at a fixed age. These are the negative aspects of the overall picture. Keeping this as background an attempt is made to assess “Influence of Gender on Psychological Wellbeing among Elderly Working And Nonworking Respondents”.

For the study purpose 309 elderly persons were included, 199 were male and remaining 110 were female. Among them retired working male were 99 and retired nonworking male were 100 and retired working female were 29 and retired nonworking female 81. Psychological wellbeing scale by Sisodia and Choudhary (2012) measuring 5 aspects namely life satisfaction, efficiency, sociability, mental health and interpersonal relations was used to measure the level of psychological wellbeing among retired working and non-working persons. Two-way ANOVA was employed to find out the impact of gender on psychological well-being. Results revealed that male respondents had better psychological wellbeing than female respondents. However, the interaction effect between groups and gender was found to be significant indicating male and female respondent differed significantly in total psychological wellbeing irrespective of the group they belong. Thus there is an impact of gender on psychological well-being among elderly working and nonworking persons. Engaging in life, financial benefit and social contacts even after retirement balance the wellbeing in elderly leading to happy and successful aging.