Background: A case study on the nature and determinants of work participation among rural elderly people has been undertaken in this work. The paper analyses the economic life with respect to work participation among elderly people belonging to Sumi community living in rural areas of the state Nagaland in India.
Methods: Cross sectional primary data on rural elderly above 60 years of age has been used in the study. And in order to study the nature and determinants of work participation of the elderly we have applied both descriptive statistical analysis and multinomial logistic regression analysis to present our findings.
Findings: Majority of elderly in the study area were still found to be engaged in economic activities both as full time and part time workers respectively. Among those elderly people working, majority of the respondents were found to be in informal economic activity such as agriculture and allied activities. Factors such as age of the elderly, sex, income and health were found to be statistically significant determinants of elderly work participation.
Application/Improvement: Based on our findings, it has been observed that one of the main concerns for the prolonged work participation among elderly is due to the effect of economic necessity. As lack of economic security among rural elderly pushes them to remain working and that factor such as health enables elderly to earn livelihood which possibly can secure them against poverty, policies should be directed towards positively improving the wellbeing of the elderly people not only on economic stability but also towards healthy ageing.