There is increasing evidence from western, developed societies that the social environment and in particular kin networks have a profound impact on the health and survival of the elderly. However there is remarkably little information on these issues in the context of rural developing societies. This 5-year award proposal describes a program of research which will collect and study high quality data from the Matlab Surveillance System (recently supplemented by new data collection) in rural Bangladesh to examine how family members both within and outside the household affect the survival, health status, health services utilization, levels of support and living arrangements of the elderly in developing countries, focusing particularly on differences by socio- demographic characteristics of both the elderly and their kin.
