Acquisition of disability and chronic morbidity by older Indians following extreme urban coastal flooding events

Project Summary Older populations in low and middle income countries are often highly dependent on children and other family members for their economic and physical wellbeing. Elders’ housing and households, however, may be adversely impacted by extreme climate events. Extreme rainfall events have already produced more frequent

major coastal urban flooding events in India. Its four largest coastal cities, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Surat, each experienced extreme flooding events in 2005-2007. Although these extreme flooding events were closely spaced relative to each other, they were each at the time they struck the largest flooding event either of

the past three or four decades (Kolkata, Surat) or in recorded meteorological history (Mumbai, Chennai). The 2005-2007 events coincidentally occurred between two successive survey data collection waves of a major panel survey of Indian households, the India Human Development Survey (IHDS). We use pre- and post-flood

IHDS panel observation in a decomposition analysis of flood impacts on disability and chronic morbidity acquisition among individuals age 50 and above. Informed by a social-vulnerability theoretical framework, this decomposition analysis uses as predictors both pre-flood socio-demographic and economic characteristics and

pre-flood to post-flood housing condition changes, residential mobility, and living arrangement changes. The aims of the study are to estimate India’s urban older population’s: (1) acquisition of disability and chronic morbidity associated with experiencing an extreme coastal-urban flooding event; (2) housing and living

arrangement change, kin proximity, and individual and household mobility associated with the flooding events; (3) extent to which changes in housing, living arrangements, and individual and household mobility were mechanisms responsible for acquisition of disability and chronic morbidity; and (4) disparities in adverse

impacts on health and family-household stability by pre-flooding individual, family, and household socio- economic and socio-demographic characteristics. The substantive findings and methodological developments of the study are expected to have generalizabilty for examining threats to elders’ health and wellbeing from

extreme climate events globally.