Abstract

Life satisfaction is the degree to which a person positively evaluates the overall quality of one’s life as a whole. This study was carried out among a randomly selected sample of 100 elderly people in the age group of age 60 to 79 years in Kozhikode District of Kerala, India using a questionnaire containing the measure of life satisfaction and various characteristics of the respondents. 60% of respondents have high life satisfaction, while 40% have low to medium life satisfaction. The characteristics of the respondents together explain 53% of the variation observed in their life satisfaction. Among them, significant predictors include age, difficulty in activities of daily living, and difficulty in instrumental activities of daily living. It was observed that comparatively older individuals are less likely to have low life satisfaction, difficulty in activities of daily living contributes to lower life satisfaction, and difficulty in carrying out instrumental activities of daily living also leads to lower life satisfaction. High life satisfaction scores exist for comparatively more respondents in the upper age group of 70 to 79 years, for those who report no difficulty in activities of daily living, and for those who have no difficulty in instrumental activities of daily living. Other factors, which may be contributing to more life satisfaction, have also been mentioned in the article. Conducting studies on different psychological aspects of elderly people would be useful to understand the factors affecting their life so that suitable strategies such as counselling, practice of relaxation techniques etc. can be formulated for improving their physical and psychological wellbeing.