Population Ageing and the Well-Being of Older Persons in Thailand ...

Section 3: Demographic, Social and Economic Profile
cent of those aged 80 and older. Second, at all ages
within the older age span, men are more likely to have
worked than women with the relative difference
pronounced for each age group. Thus among those
60-64, just over two thirds of men but only modestly
more than two fifths of women worked in the prior
week. By ages 80 and over, although only 13 per cent
of men were still working this is still more that three
times the four per cent of women whom were still
economically active.
3.2 Economic activity and sources of income
Economic activity. The official retirement age in
Thailand is 60 for government employees and
workers in state enterprises. Employees of some
private sector firms are also subject to a compulsory
retirement age. For the majority of the population
who are engaged in agriculture or the informal sector
of the economy, the concept of some discrete point at
which retirement occurs is ambiguous. Even among
those who must leave their job at some specific age,
retirement does not necessarily mean cessation of
economic activity as they can still find alternative work
that has no compulsory retirement age. Still, for a
variety of reasons including changes in physical
strength and health, most Thais disengage from
economic activities as they progress to older ages.
According to the 2007 Survey of Older Persons, 36
per cent of all respondents age 60 or older reported
that they worked during the previous week. 6 As
Figure 3.6 indicates, this overall level obscures major
differences by age and gender. Two clear patterns
are evident. First, the per cent who worked during
the previous week declines steadily with age among
the older population. Overall modestly more than
half of persons age 60-64 worked compared to less
than one fourth of those 70-74 and only seven per
The per cent of older persons who worked in 2007
resemble closely results from the 1980 census, which
also refers to activity during the prior week,
indicating that little change has occurred in this
respect (Chayovan, Knodel & Siriboon 1990). For
no age group among the 60 and older population, do
the shares of men or of women who work during the
prior week according to the 1980 census differ by more
than a few percentage points from those found in the
equivalent age and gender groups in the 2007 Survey
of Older Persons.
There a pronounced difference between rural and
urban elderly in the per cent who reported working
in the prior week. Among rural elderly, 52 per cent
reported working compared to only 28 per cent
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