Perhaps one of the most notable demographic trends in the South Asian (Indian) society today is the fast pace of population aging. Aging will emerge as a pressing population issue by year 2020 (HelpAgeIndia, 2005). Population aging is often accompanied by an increase in perceived caregiver burden. Elder care giving often results in subjective feelings such as abandonment and a sense of entrapment. In general, these subjective feelings have been called caregiver burden. The purpose of this study is to examine caregiver burden in Allahabad City, India. Based on Person – environment theory, three hypotheses are proposed. They are 1) higher the socioeconomic status of the care giver, lower the amount of perceived care giver burden 2) greater the amount of role conflict experienced by the care giver, greater the amount of perceived care giver burden; 3) greater the adherence to sociocultural norms of elder care giving, lower the amount of perceived care giver burden. Allahabad city has of population of 102, 2365 people according to 2000 Indian census (Census of India, 2000). Probability sampling method is used to generate a sample of primary care givers. The final sample is comprised of 259 caregivers. They were interviewed face to face using a structured survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was translated to Hindi and back translated. Multiple regression technique was used to evaluate the validity of the proposed hypotheses. More specifically, the control variables were entered first with perceived care giver burden as the dependent variable. Next, the independent variables, socio economic status, adherence to elder care cultural norms, and extent of role conflict were entered in the regression model. The three independent variables; socio economic status, adherence to elder care cultural norms, and extent of role conflict are significant at the .05 level. The unadjusted R- squared value is high, nearly 65 percent. This suggests that the regression model we have proposed in this study provides a good fit to the data. At least 65 percent of the variance in care giver burden is explained by the proposed model. The results suggest that in Allahabad City, the extent of burden experienced by elder care givers is a function of their socio-economic status, the amount of role conflict experienced and the degree of adherence to elder cultural norms. The finding that socio economic status has negative effect on care giver burden in India is important. Widows, non – pensioners, and elderly who live alone generally have low socio-economic status in India. Improving the status of these groups is important from social policy point of view. Secondly, it is important to help care givers manage their roles. Cultural norms that encourage active involvement in elder care should be encouraged. Services provided to care givers should empower care givers provide elder care at home. Implications for social work are presented.

Census of India (Jan, 2000) http://www.censusindia.net/cendata1/datatable1 Retrieved, 2/19/05. HelpAgeIndia. (2000). http:/www.helpageindia.com/ageing.html Retrieved, 3/16/05