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

Section 3: Demographic, Social and Economic Profile
To assess the material well-being of older persons we
examine income, the value of major assets, indications
of the quality of housing, and the presence of various
household possessions. Each of these dimensions has
limitations that require care when interpreting results.
This is especially so in the case of older persons who
often live in households shared with younger
members who may be the main source of household
support. Under such circumstances the direct income
of the elderly members may be less important for their
material well-being than the income of other
members of the household. Also in cases where older
persons coreside, specific possessions often belong to
the other members or to the household overall rather
than to the elderly themselves. Nevertheless, the
possessions at least reflect the overall wealth status of
the household and in many cases the older person
typically benefit from them. Additional issues arise
when interpreting gender differences in the personal
income for married elderly since spouses are likely to
share incomes with each other. Likewise with
ownership of assets, both partners in a married couple
may benefit from the asset regardless of which spouse
owns it. These caveats need to be considered when
interpreting the results concerning income, assets,
household wealth and household possessions presented
below.
Income and assets. Table 3.6 presents measures of
income and wealth of persons age 60 and above by
area of residence and gender. The upper panel
indicates the per cent distribution of the reported
average annual income in Thai baht (approximately
33 Baht = US $1 at the time of the survey). Clearly
older age urban residents have a more favorable
income distribution than their rural counterparts with
the urban distribution far more concentrated towards
higher levels of income than rural distribution. While
almost a fifth of rural residents reported under 10,000
baht as their annual income this was the case for only
just over 10 per cent of urban residents. In contrast,
almost half of urban residents reported incomes of
50,000 baht or more compared to less than a fourth
of rural residents. The relative difference is even more
striking for the share whose income is 100,000 baht
or more, a group that accounts for only 10 per cent of
rural residents but almost 3 times this share for urban
residents.
The lower panel shows the per cent distribution of
older persons with respect to the total value of their
property and savings. Property was defined broadly
to include gold, expensive possessions such as a car,
house, or land. This measure of wealth shows a more
complicated relationship with area of residence.
Urban elderly are both somewhat more likely than
their rural counterparts to have no such assets but also
more likely to report having property and savings in
the highest category shown, i.e. those valued at one
million or more. This likely reflects the greater
availability of land in rural areas and thus more
widespread land and home ownership among elderly
rural than urban residents. 7
As noted above, interpreting gender differences in
income among married persons is complicated since
spouses likely share benefits from each other’s incomes.
While access to income does not necessarily imply
decision making and control over resources, in
Thailand within the family wives have considerable
power and typically control the household finances. 8
Among the unmarried, however, gender comparisons
are far less ambiguous since there is no spouse who
may be sharing income with the respondent. For this
reason we show gender differences not only for all
elderly men and women but also separately for those
who are not currently married. Overall, older men
have a more favorable distribution of income than do
women, with more women than men concentrated
in the lower income categories and more men than
women concentrated in the higher income categories.
When the income distribution of unmarried men and
women are compared, however, there is far less
difference and men are actually more likely to fall into
the lowest income category than are women. Thus
the overall gender difference holds primarily for
currently married persons among whom most are
likely to be sharing the benefits of their spouse’s
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