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

Section 5: Family support and intergenerational exchanges
Table 5.3 examines whether these elderly are worse
off than others. Two indicators of the economic
situation of respondents are shown. The first
measure is the per cent of respondents who both say
that their income is inadequate and that they are
dissatisfied with their financial situation. Based on
self-assessments, such respondents are in the worst
economic circumstances and presumably most in need
of material assistance. The second measure is the mean
number of possessions in their households (as
described in Section 3). To indicate how a particular
group compares to the overall population, the ratio of
each measure for a particular group to the average for
all older persons is also provided in the table. In the
case of self assessed difficult economic circumstances,
ratios over 1.00 indicate they are worse off than
average while for mean household possessions, ratios
under 1.00 indicate they are worse off.
In general, neither persons who live alone nor
persons who live only with a spouse are more likely
than elderly overall to be characterized by poor
self-assessed economic circumstances. Nevertheless
considerable differences are evident within both the
groups who live alone and those who live only with a
spouse when they are divided into those who are
childless, those who have a child but not next door,
and those who live next to a child. Clearly
disproportionately more of those who are childless,
both among persons living alone and those living with
only a spouse, fare much worse than average. This is
not true, however, for those who have children
regardless of whether a child of theirs lives next door
to them or not.
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