According to (Shin & Jhonson, 1978), Life satisfaction (LS) is an important component of successful aging. This refers to a judgmental process, in which individual access the quality of their life on the basis of their unique set of criteria. Elderly individuals tend to be more sensitive to their LS and health conditions, depending on their socioeconomic situations, as they tend to have relatively limited work performance (Lee & Jeon, 2005).
Life satisfaction is a subjective indicator of well-being and is related to health, morbidity and mortality (Stalbrand et al., 2007).This is one of the main determinants of well-being,
15 which reflects the cognitive judgmental aspect of an individual (Diener et al., 1985).
Older people who experience bad health tend to express low level of LS. By contrast, the elderly people having higher socioeconomic status, receiving adequate family support, satisfied with one‟s living environment/condition, and staying in one‟s own home plays a crucial role in achieving successful ageing (Riediger, Freund & Baltes, 2005; Chou &
Chi 2002). As per the WHO, four factors directly affecting LS of elderly are physical health condition, mental health condition, social relationship and environment (Efklides et al., 2003). For developing LS among the elderly, it is necessary to consider factors like, satisfaction in residential environment, satisfaction in neighborhood relationship, satisfaction on economic status, satisfaction in maintaining friendship, satisfaction in family relationship, satisfaction in physical health condition, satisfaction in marital status satisfaction in job or career, and lastly, satisfaction in others aspect of life(Han & Hong 2010).
A study of LS by (Ferring et al., 2004) found slight negative effects of age on general LS, and slightly higher LS for men. A study found that neither age nor gender was positively associated to LS (Subasi &Hayran, 2005). A large study in 25 European countries on LS found that income has minimal effect on LS (Delhey, 2004). A study on relationship between age and life-satisfaction in 27 years (1928 to 2009) in Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Sweden in a research titling "Does life-satisfaction changes with age?" Their sample included 39420people between the ages of 15 to 100. The results revealed that contrary to Finlanders and Swedish, the relationship between age and LS can be clearly described by a curve in Stovenia and Latvia young and old people have higher life-satisfaction compared to other age-group (Realo &Dobewall, 2011). In addition, (Post et al., 1998) in a research titling "the predictors of mental situation and life-satisfaction" found out that age is a predictor of life-satisfaction. Time-varying physical health is related to changes in LS (Mroczek & Spiro, 2005).
However, physical disability was not found to be related significantly to LS in the Taiwanese elderly (Hsu, 2009). Psychological health is usually related to subjective well-being, and previous studies report a significant relationship between depressive
16 symptoms and both cognitive function and LS (Berg et al., 2006; Rabbittet al., 2008;
Hsu, 2009).
A multivariate structural model on LS was developed and they also found moderate positive effects of socioeconomic status, including income and educational level, on LS (Ferna´ ndez-Ballesteros et al., 2001).A study revealed statistically significant effects of educational level on LS (Subasi & Hayran, 2005). According to (Sener et al., 2008) LS among female elderly tend to depend on educational background. A research also proved that the following social support systems would have positive impacts on the elderly‟s LS such as education, marriage, occupation, active daily life status, living arrangement, diet, transportation, and emotion (Yeh, 2004). Change in marital status is related to the LS trajectory (Mroczek &Spiro, 2005), and new widowhood is related to morale and social engagement (Bennett, 2005). Women and men in formal marriages experience higher levels of LS than do people in other marriage status (Evans & Kelley 2004). Few studies believe that five factor of personality traits could explain one of third variance in LS (Wood et al., 2008).
There is a strong positive relationship between psychological well-being and LS (Keyes et al., 2002). Psychosocial variables strongly related to LS are size of social network, social support and positive social relations (Antonucci et al., 1996). There is a statistically significant correlation among the factors of wellbeing and LS (Villar et al., 2005). These relationships were moderate to large for self-acceptance, purpose in life and personal growth, but low for autonomy, environmental mastery and positive relations with others.
Family support is related to psychological well-being for the Chinese elderly (Deng et al., 2010). Family support has a greater effect on happiness when family income is lower (North et al., 2008), and emotional support has been found to buffer LS during traumatic periods (Krause, 2004). For the Japanese community-based elderly, relationships with friends are more important to the LS (Ho et al., 2003). Continued working and participating in volunteer activities or community events also are related to higher subjective well-being (Warret al., 2004; Kawamoto et al., 2005; Pinquart &Schindler, 2007; Schwingel et al., 2009).
17 Various studies indicate social network as a factor which a strong influence on the elder‟s LS (Pinquart &Sorensen, 2001). Psychological variable and locus of control affects subjective well-being more than social network, and pointed to the need for multivariate analysis to increase understanding of the variation in the explanatory variables and LS in elderly individuals (Landau &Litwin, 2001). Most of the research mainly utilized ADLs and IADLs to be the indicators to evaluate the elderly health condition and LS. Physical activities, including ADL are related to LS (Markides & Martin, 1979). Functional capacity of LS is measured through ADL viz. bathing, dressing and undressing, toileting, continence, movement and food intake (Asberg & Sonn 1988).
In India, a study focused on LS and influence of demographic factors on LS of the elderly people. They concluded that majority of the respondents for the study had low level of LS. Moreover, the demographic factors namely gender and habit of savings influence the level of LS of the respondents. The variables viz. health problems, ownership of house, ownership of land, religion, monthly income and number of children does not influence the level of LS (Maheswaran & Ranjit, 2013). A study on relationship between LS and alienation in the district of Kerala, India indicated that elderly men experience less alienation in comparison to the elderly women. Moreover, both elderly male and female do not exhibit significant differences in their LS (Balachandranet et al., 2007). A study conducted in rural Karnataka, India explored the pattern of social support system and LS amongst the elders. The research revealed that family support is a significant factor for the better psychological well-being of elderly. It was also observed that homebound elderly had more advantages than the institutionalized elderly did, in respect to daily activities, level of satisfaction, social support and source of financial support (Marpady et al., 2012).