BANGKOK: Having children is the last thing on Ms Phanphaka Haworth’s mind.
Besides potentially hindering her career, the 39-year-old university lecturer believes having kids would be a huge struggle in her home country Thailand, which she said offers limited support for modern-day parents and lacks environments conducive to raising a family.
“If I have to bring up a child in this country, I’d be so exhausted in so many ways. The government support isn’t good enough and the social condition isn’t that great. There are many issues such as living conditions and the air quality,” she told CNA.
“Should I have to raise my kid in Thailand, I wouldn’t want to have one.”
Ms Phanphaka is far from alone in her views, as the data makes clear. The number of births in the Southeast Asian nation plunged to a record 74-year low in 2022.
The demographic disruption is two-pronged – a greying society is taking deeper root as well, with the elderly already making up roughly a fifth of the kingdom’s people.
Other countries in Asia such as China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore are grappling with similar population trends.
But the projection is stark in Thailand.
If the kingdom continues in this direction, its population of 66 million will halve before the turn of the century, leading to profound impact on the economy, healthcare and development.
Experts say defusing the crisis or at least softening the blow hinges on raising awareness and changing mindsets, ramping up support by all sectors, and making sure the measures are introduced at pace as the clock ticks down.
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“THAI PEOPLE WOULDN’T HAVE CHILDREN”
Arresting the declining birth rate is a long game that experts say requires meticulous planning, continuation and significant input from the state, the private sector and the public.
The current government of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin is well aware of the population projection and its long-term implications for the labour force and productivity.
Upon taking office in September, Public Health Minister Dr Cholnan Srikaew stressed how vital procreation is for the country’s competitiveness and vowed to put the promotion of childbirth on the national agenda.
He underlined the need to change public perception of how having many children could make them poor.
“Thai people wouldn’t have children, especially those who have good education, knowledge and abilities and are financially equipped. They wouldn’t do it,” the minister told parliament on Sep 12.
“This is something distorted in Thai society,” he added.
Despite the government’s desire for more babies, raising a family is no easy task for ordinary Thais when the support system cannot catch up with rising living costs or demand for both parents to work.
The statutory maternity leave of 14 weeks – including weekends and public holidays – does not allow much time for working parents to nurture their infants. Even when they need to go back to work, analysts say childcare centres are inadequate and high-quality facilities are expensive.
“When the government asks people to have children for the country, we have to ask them back: What does the country give us in return?” said Ms Phanphaka.
Although the government provides various subsidies, she asserted they are not good enough and that parents are left with no choice but to work harder to provide a good standard education and a good life for their children.
“Thailand isn’t pleasant. It’s not the kind of society that’s good enough to make me want to have a child,” she told CNA.
MORE MONEY FOR PARENTS
To increase the population, experts say the government should be resolute and consistent in providing parents with comprehensive support that would make child-rearing less of a struggle.
Mr Siripong Kaimuk, a senior economist from the Bank of Thailand’s macroeconomic department, suggested the state should increase financial assistance to better reflect the cost of living and ease parent’s burdens in caring for a child, whether it would be in the form of a lump-sum grant for each newborn baby or subsidies on tuition fees and medical care.
While raising the number of childcare facilities may seem like an obvious solution, Dr Boonyarit acknowledged it would require major investment for the construction and sourcing of qualified child carers.
Officials are trying to come up with effective solutions and one of them could be increasing the capacity of existing facilities to accommodate infants, he said.
By putting childbirth promotion on the national agenda, the Ministry of Public Health hopes to create an environment that is more conducive to bringing up children, where parents’ financial burdens are better subsidised and the infrastructure necessary for childcare is stronger and more accessible.
The Health Department has also proposed improving rights to childcare leave and increasing paid maternity leave to six months as well as introducing more flexible working hours or options to work from home.
“Various measures implemented by different countries may not be able to reverse the total fertility rate right away, but at least they should help slow down the fall,” Dr Boonyarit told CNA.
LOOMING THREAT TO THE WORKFORCE
While deciding whether to have children is a basic right, fewer newborns can have far-reaching consequences for labour-intensive economies such as Thailand.
Mr Siripong from the Bank of Thailand warns that low birth rates can trigger a chain reaction that not only squeezes the country’s workforce and productivity, but also lowers domestic consumption, foreign investments and government revenue from taxes used in development projects.
“Investors may not see Thailand as one of their first options and consider our neighbouring countries with higher working-age populations and consumption instead,” he explained.
At the same time, the country may need to rely more on imports in the future if its export sector takes a hit from the shrinking labour force, he added.
It is a reflection of how people in Thailand are living longer lives. Still, growing older also comes with the associated health risks, pressuring healthcare and possibly requiring the government to spend more money.
But there could be a silver lining.
Many experts see seniors as an untapped resource that could boost the country’s workforce – especially when the working-age group is on course to decline due to the falling birth rate.
“A certain number of the elderly are still strong. As a result, we may need to provide them with more job opportunities so they can contribute to society and maintain productivity,” said Dr Phusit Prakongsai, secretary general of the Foundation of Thai Gerontology Research and Development institute (TGRI).
A change in perspective on the elderly and population ageing is an important step in unlocking their potential and utilising their experience and skills to strengthen Thailand’s labour force, he added.
What exactly is an ageing society?
It is where older persons make up a growing proportion of the population. There are three categories:
Aged society: The population aged 60 years or older is more than 10% of the total (or the population aged 65 years or older is more than 7%).Complete-aged society: The population aged 60 years or older is more than 20% of the total (or the population aged 65 years or older is more than 14%).Super-aged society: The population aged 60 years or older is more than 28% of the total (or the population aged 65 years or older is more than 20%).
Source: Foundation of Thai Gerontology Research and Development Institute
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“HIRE ME”: GIVE THE ELDERLY A CHANCE TO WORK
Thailand is home to about 13 million elderly people and according to Dr Phusit, the majority of them are poor.
In 2021, the Department of Older Persons reported that around 46 per cent of the elderly population did not have savings. Moreover, nearly half of those who did reported savings of less than 50,000 baht.
“A number of elderly people are also in debt. Some debts were incurred when they were still working. Others belong to their family members,” Dr Phusit told CNA.
Once removed from the workforce, life has become a constant struggle for many elderly people in Thailand. A number of them are homeless, especially in big cities such as Bangkok, where more than 1,200 people live on the streets.
Sixty-eight-year-old Wattana Noottarn was one of them. A few years ago, the former mechanic lost his job and started living on the pavement along Ratchadamnoen Avenue, sharing the space with hundreds of other homeless people.
“Everything had fallen apart. My life was a failure,” he said, adding a conflict with his family meant he could not go back home.
No matter how hard he tried, Mr Wattana could not find a stable job that would help him afford food or shelter.
There was no job for someone his age, not until he was approached by the Mirror Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that has advocated social development in Thailand since 1991.
As an aged society becomes even more of a reality in Thailand, analysts say further awareness about health, retirement planning and savings is needed.
Dr Phusit from TGRI advised that people should start doing it early, before they turn 60, in order to be self-dependent and avoid creating more burden for the government.
Additionally, related parties should look at how to better manage the healthcare system and offer social welfare services for the elderly with special needs in order to assist their families.
“Sometimes, the children or grandchildren of the elderly have to quit their jobs to look after them as they’re bed-ridden. So if we have a system that would help these families or communities with such patients or people with dementia, that would help improve the quality of life for Thais in general,” said Dr Phusit.
In Chonburi, Ms Phanphaka has already started saving up for her retirement. One of the plans is to find a good nursing home when she is old, and alone.
For her, spending her final years in a facility without children is hardly a concern.
“Just planning my retirement is already hard enough,” she told CNA.
“If I have a child and have to work for my child’s future as well as my own, it’d be exhausting.”