ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Sociology of Stratification
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1549004
Does Widowhood Affect Social Capital in Old Age: The Case of India
Provisionally accepted
- 1Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, Jodhpur, India
- 2Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
- 3Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India, Jamshedpur, India
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Purpose: In India, widowhood, besides, being a personal status, presents itself as a social institution. Widows in India have long been deprived of normal living conditions and their hardships have been generally inconspicuous to policymakers as well as researchers. Therefore, this study is an attempt to understand the social dynamics of widowhood in India mainly through empirical means. It aims to examine the social capital of old widows through the lens of sociability, safety, and trust and solidarity. Methods:Ordered logistic regressions and Item Response Theory Partial Credit models with data drawn from the SAGE Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health which was conducted across six populous states of India have been used for analysis. Findings: Results show that old widows experience significantly lesser sociability, trust and solidarity as compared to their married counterparts. Also, older widows from high income group are less vulnerable and have higher social capital compared to that of older widows from poorer income groups. Discussion: Policy implications drawn based on the findings can play a vital role in uplifting the life of old widows in India significantly. This study is perhaps the first study to capture how widowhood affects the social capital in old age in India. Besides, based on the findings, we also suggest some policy initiatives to address the concern of low social capital among old widows in India.
Keywords: Widowhood, Women, old age, social capital, sociability, India
Received: 23 Jan 2025; Accepted: 14 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Choudhary, Singh and Hifz Ur Rahman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Akanksha Choudhary, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, Jodhpur, India
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