The contribution of senior citizen grants (SCG) on the living conditions of the elder persons in Uganda: a case study of Gulu city
Abstract
This research paper was aimed at understanding the contribution of senior citizen grants on the living conditions of the elder persons in Uganda, a case study of Gulu city. The objective of this study was to investigate examine the effect of social demographic factors to Senior Citizens, to find out the number of Senior Citizens who benefit from the SCGs and examine the relationship between the grant received and one‘s welfare. The assessment was made on gender, description, age of respondent, average monthly expenditure, familiarity with SCGs, mode of payment for the SCGs and awareness of these SCGs using both primary data and secondary data sourced from different sub counties in Gulu City. In the results, majority (68.3%) were male and the rest (31.7%) were the female counter parts and it also emerged that majority (60%) of the people who responded have ever received SCGs and only 40% who have never received SCGs. At bivariate level the results showed that only highest level of education, average monthly expenditure, familiarity, and awareness which were significant (p-values < 0.05).
In multivariate level, factors limiting access to online shopping were only three and these included; average monthly expenditure, familiarity with online shopping and speed of the internet (p-values < 0.05).
In conclusion, the result showed that Average monthly expenditure (social demographic factor), Familiarity with SCGs (awareness of the grants given to the elderly) significantly contribute to the living conditions of older persons in Gulu City. Thus, based on the findings, the study recommends the following;
Average monthly expenditure had a significant relationship with online SCGs and this meant that the higher a person‘s monthly expenditure the higher the chance of the person shopping online. Therefore, for people to spend, they must work well, earn income, save, invest and spend. By doing so, this will help the teaching staff, non-teaching staff and students to earn more and spend more. Ideally, having an alternative source of income apart from either waiting only for your monthly salary or from your parents would help teaching staff and non-teaching and students respectively to enhance on their income which would determine what to spend in a month.
Familiarity with the Senior citizen grants by the older persons has a positive significant effect on their living conditions. Therefore, older persons in Uganda and Gulu City in particular should take an initiative to register and be in position to receive these funds from Government in terms of SCGs. By doing this, it will help the older persons be in position to better their living conditions through utilising these funds adequately well in terms of being in position to meet their medical bills, feeding costs alongside other basic necessities of life
In general, the Senior Citizen grants have played a key role in bettering the lives of the older persons in Gulu city and in Uganda at large