Understanding Frailty, Functional Health and Disability among Older Personsin India: A Decomposition Analysis of Gender and Place of Resident

Background: we estimated and compared the differences in frailty, disability, and functionallimitation among men and women, and among urban and rural dwellers. further, this study alsoprovides the analysis of key factors influencing frailty, functional limitation and disability amongolder persons in india.study design: two cross-sectional surveys.methods: who-sage (2007-10) and bkpai-2011 (building knowledgebase for populationageing in india) (2007-10) were used. oaxaca decomposition method was used to decompose thegender and place of resident differentials. statistical software rstudio (version 1.2.1335) was usedto perform these analysesresults: the decomposition model was able to explain 46.5%, 41.6% and 46.4% of the differencebetween frailty, functional limitation and disability among older persons respectively. the keyfactors, which significantly (p<0.05) explained the gap for both frailty and functional limitation, wereeducation (0.009 &1.24), working status (0.018 & 1.93), physical activity (0.001 & 0.15) andmigration (0.018 & 1.98). higher educational attainment (0.008 & 1.10) and wealth quintile (0.009& 1.18) in urban areas might be a factors resulting in the lowering of frailty and functional limitations.conclusion: the poorer functional health among older women can largely be explained by genderdifferentials in socioeconomic status and consequent empowerment (such as less control of theirmobility and financial independence). this implies that efforts to improve gender disadvantages inearlier life stages might get reflected in better health for females in older age.