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

Section 5: Family support and intergenerational exchanges
of living arrangements with an examination of trends
in co-residence. As noted in the previous section, only
about 5 per cent of current elders have no living
children. Thus childlessness is not a common
limitation for co-residence. Table 5.1 shows several
indicators of co-residence based on household
composition. 14 They reveal a clear decline in
co-residence with children during the last two decades
with the overall per cent of persons 60 and above who
live in the same household with a child falling from
77 per cent in 1986 to only 59 per cent by 2007. 15
Each of the three most recent surveys indicate higher
levels of urban than rural co-residence but declines
are evident both among urban and rural older
persons. Also of interest is the proportion who live
independently of others, either living alone or only
with a spouse. Both the per cent of persons age 60
and above who live alone and, even more so, the per cent
who live only with a spouse have increased during the
last two decades. Together, these measures indicate
that by 2007 almost one fourth of Thais age 60 and
over live independently, up from only 11 per cent in
just over two decades earlier.
As noted above, measures of literal co-residence
ignore situations in which elderly parents and their
children live very near each other but in separate
dwellings, an arrangement that can meet many of the
same needs of the elderly as co-residence. Such
situations are common in Thailand, especially in
rural settings (Cowgill, 1972; Knodel &
Saengtienchai, 1999). Figure 5.1 indicates the
per cent of persons in 1995 and 2007 who either lived
with or adjacent to a child. The latter situation is more
common in rural than urban areas. This difference
undoubtedly reflects the greater availability of land in
rural than urban areas to build separate housing for
adult children nearby the parental home. Thus when
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