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

Section 3: Demographic, Social and Economic Profile
Other indicators of housing quality for older age Thais
likewise show considerable improvements. The share
who live in houses with a flush toilet more than
doubled from a tenth to almost a fourth. In contrast,
the proportion who live in dwellings with only a
primitive pit toilet or no toilet at all was already quite
low in 1994 and has since become negligible (falling
to under one per cent). Finally, the availability of piped
water inside the dwelling rose sharply from under a
third in 1994 to almost four-fifths by 2007.
These positive changes occurred both in urban and
rural areas. At the same time, higher percentages of
urban than rural residents lived in dwellings with more
favored characteristics at the time of each survey. In
some cases the differences are striking. For example,
in 2007, more than twice the per cent of urban than
rural elderly lived in houses made of cement or brick
and almost half of urban older persons lived in
dwellings with a flush toilet compared to only 14
per cent of rural older persons.
Material possessions of a household also reflect wealth.
Table 3.8 shows results for a variety of possessions
based on several surveys going as far back as 1986.
The results reveal a substantial increase in the households
possessions of older age Thais. For example,
less than a fourth in 1986 lived in a household with a
refrigerator but by 2007 only a small minority lacked
one. One of the most striking changes that has
particularly important implications for older persons
is with respect to telephones. In 1994 only 15 per
cent of older persons lived in households that had a
telephone available compared to over three fourths of
older persons by 2007. This was largely due to the
spread of mobile phones which were virtually
nonexistent in 1994 among the general Thai
population. However considerable increases in
landline phones also occurred. While in many cases
the mobile phone may not have belonged to the
elderly themselves, they would at least have potential
access to the cell phones of other household
members. Thus such phones could be used in urgent
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