Breaking News: Thailand’s Low Fertility Rate Crisis: Why Nobody’s Talking About It
Bangkok, Thailand – March 15, 2023
Thailand, a country known for its vibrant culture, stunning beaches, and rich history, is facing an unprecedented demographic crisis. With a total fertility rate (TFR) of just 1.37 in 2022, Thailand now has the lowest fertility rate in the world, even surpassing countries like Singapore and South Korea. However, despite this alarming statistic, the issue remains shrouded in silence. Why are people rarely discussing Thailand’s extremely low fertility rate, and what does it mean for the country’s future?
Thailand’s Fertility Rate: A Growing Concern
According to the National Institute for Statistical Analysis (NIST), Thailand’s fertility rate has been declining steadily over the past few decades. In 2022, the TFR stood at just 1.37, significantly below the replacement rate of 2.1. This trend is expected to continue, with some experts predicting a TFR of as low as 1.15 by 2030.
Consequences of Low Fertility Rate
A low fertility rate can have far-reaching consequences for a country’s population and economy. Some of the key concerns include:
- Aging Population: With fewer people having children, Thailand’s population is rapidly aging, leading to a significant burden on the healthcare and pension systems.
- Labor Shortage: The declining birth rate means a shrinking workforce, which could lead to labor shortages and economic stagnation.
- Social Security Concerns: With fewer younger generations contributing to the workforce, social security systems are at risk of collapse.
Why is Thailand’s Low Fertility Rate Underreported?
Despite the severity of the issue, Thailand’s low fertility rate remains a taboo topic, with many experts and officials reluctant to discuss it publicly. Some possible reasons include:
- Embarrassment: The decline in fertility rate is a sensitive topic, and authorities may be embarrassed to discuss it publicly.
- Lack of Awareness: Many people in Thailand are not aware of the issue or its consequences, which can contribute to the lack of discussion.
- Government Priorities: The government may prioritize other issues, such as economic growth and tourism development, over the fertility crisis.
Breaking the Silence
It’s essential for Thailand to break the silence surrounding its low fertility rate and address the issue head-on. The government must work to increase awareness about the importance of family planning and fertility, as well as provide support for young families and couples.
Key Takeaways
- Thailand has the lowest fertility rate in the world, with a TFR of 1.37 in 2022.
- The low fertility rate has significant consequences for the country’s population and economy.
- The issue is often underreported due to embarrassment, lack of awareness, and government priorities.
- Breaking the silence and addressing the issue head-on is crucial for Thailand’s future.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tags:
- Thailand fertility rate
- Lowest fertility rate in the world
- Thailand population crisis
- Fertility rate decline
- Aging population Thailand
- Labor shortage Thailand
- Social security Thailand
- Demographic crisis Thailand
- Thailand economic growth
- Thailand family planning
- Thailand young families
Stay Up-to-Date with Our Breaking News
Follow us for the latest updates on Thailand’s low fertility rate and its impact on the country’s future. Don’t miss out on expert analysis, in-depth reports, and breaking news as it happens.
I always heard people hype up about Demographic crisis or Population decline in Japan or South Korea everywhere all over the news and their politics like those two country are the prime example of it.
But believe it or not? Thailand fertility rate is currently at 1.0 (means that average number of children one woman at age 15-45 has is 1) is even lower than Japan which is at 1.25, we Thai are at the lowest point of the fertility rate Japan ever has since the foundation of their country at year 2019 and then its continue to decline even more rapidly than Japan's.
About South Korea, with population of 51,000,000, we definitely have more population and will be the country with the largest population to ever have fertility rate below 1.
With those two countries have focus on rising the fertility rate, their government has show tons of concern about how to migrated the problems that will follow their demographic crisis, Thailand government seems so silent about this issue, not even Thai government though, the entire medias also seldomly talk about this and focus more on Japan and South Korea instead.
Will we doomed by the demographic crisis in another decades or Thailand will start to have a more serious back up plan? Or we will allow more Myanmar, Cambodian and Lao to migrate and help the shortage of workforce? We will never know.
View info-news.info by PainSpare5861
It’s quite an often mentioned issue as far as I’ve noticed.
There’s an excellent documentary by DeutscheWeld (DW) on YouTube about the Thai fertility crisis. Economic insecurity seems to be the major problem. To be honest, the country does not seem have a great outlook – completely unstable politics, huge wealth inequality, forced conscription, huge exposure to coastal flooding etc etc.
In this economy?
you just did days ago, stop spamming
The drop over 10 years is actually crazy.
The ultra wealthy elite that governs this country will be fine so why would they change things?
>Or we will allow more Myanmar, Cambodian and Lao to migrate and help the shortage of workforce? We will never know.
I think the issue with this is that the birthrate is dropping mostly amongs the middle class. Thailand will face a shortage of skilled and educated workers.
Bruh imagine this running with a brain drain.
My wife (Thai) has a dad who is retiring at 60 from Government work. Her mother is retiring. Her neighbor is retiring. Her brother who is an engineer for the Government goes to ‘work” for like 2 or 3 hours a day and points at stuff, then comes back to drink. They tell me “You CAN’T get fired from the Government!”
They all got housing most of the time as well.
**ALL of that is going to completely collapse because of this birthrate.** That shit only works if you have a larger number of people coming into the productive workforce to pay off all these people retiring and expecting pensions and payouts. And all of these completely useless Government employees with USELESS “jobs.”
OR — the only other thing you can do is raise the taxes so stinkin’ high on everybody that’s LEFT that they barely get to keep any of the money they make.
In either case — the whole thing will crash and burn because it’s a Ponzi scheme. The sane thing is about to happen on a global scale.
I don’t think people understand what’s about to happen to the world because of this. Everybody is just walking around in la-la land thinking the next 40 years are going to be like the last 40 years.
I’m personally having kids here. Already have one — I want to make plenty more. But we are sleep walking into a Black Plague level die off and population reduction and there are going to be BILLIONS of old people with nobody to care for them.
I have noticed that some appliance instructions are coming with Burmese language in addition to English and Thai. Completely without evidence, but made me think something is up behind the scenes. Maybe some political and economic backroom thinking: Burmese war brings refugees who can backfill Thai worker shortage.
I have seen Burmese, both genders, work on a building construction project over the course of several months and I was most impressed by their work ethic. We have or had a phrase in America “get-r-done” . . . these workers worked in that spirit.
Laos and Cambodia lack the numbers but Myanmar has a population of 55 million.
It’s not an issue that can be fixed. The government is too busy getting their cuts
And who’s afraid of not getting cheap labors? maybe it’s a good time to change mass consumer behavior.
We in human resource field saw this problem coming sonce 20 years ago. We knew that Thai will have aged population problem combine with low birthrate.
However, we do have influx of migrants both skilled and unskilled so if you add migrants in the picture, it is still not that bad like JP or KR.
I don’t care what elitists might say or express about this issue. If my qol is bad enough, I won’t make my life worse with a child (let alone children). If they want more slaves to work for them, they are free to reproduce by themselves.
As a still developing country yeah compared to its neighbours, thailand has the problem of “getting old before (getting) rich”.
With tons of shitty things going on in Thailand, I mean who would want to have kids and let them live live such a shitty life. The misery ends with me, honey. No more miserable suffering.
We are chill at work and really good at sex.
Unlike SK or Japan that often maidenless, misogynistic run wild, and overwork to death.
We just don’t wanna pump another wage slaves for oligarchs and heritage politicians.
I thought every Thai-Women wants children?
Economic problems are probably an important factor. But even well-off people don’t have kids. My brother and his wife are top 10% earners and they don’t want to have kids because they don’t like how the country is going, especially politically.
Sadly, Thailand is regionally important, but not globally important. It doesn’t matter to the western media about our birth rate.
I heard it a couple of time
I stepped up to the plate and helped add two more Thai citizens to the population. It was a dirty, thankless job. But someone had to do it.
I think gov only cares about money
Mechai Viravaidya belongs in jail.
Hmm that’s quite depressing tbh. Seems like our government want to favor the Chinese gov to become their trading partner while they allow the land privatization that the elites would massively invest in and use it to their fullest advantage by selling lands in a massively increased price or building up a condo or sky-rise apartment (to also seemingly reduce the housing issue to make of a lesser concern yo the media and continue to benefit off our labor). These people are also the ones who would kill all local business as they also expand their business to other industry such as supermarket chain, convenient shop and other basic needs stuff that it would encourage us to either work for them to survive or compete with them who have tons of influence across all industries. So, due to the necessities, most people need to work for them to provide for themselves and their families. Even if they would like to do their own business, it’s also incredibly hard these days because even the rental price for either business or housing purpose is extremely high and they would have extremely low success rate to find their niche in the market due to this monopolized mega companies such as CP that are everywhere in every industry. Therefore, we basically left with more or less…no land, no business opportunities to launch our brand in the market as well as no choice apart from relying on these monopolized mega companies’ products as the overall price of their products are cheap and high in availability that we don’t need to walk or even take an extra expense to pay for transportation or oil which in combination would make their products way more suitable options in many ways. So, yeah, as long as the gov doesn’t take any action to reduce land privatization as well as to reduce the monopoly branches expansion. The extremely low fertility rate is what we would get because the means of productions are almost 100% in their hands because they have everything from lands, labors, entrepreneurship and capital while we basically have nothing in our own hands. Some of us also live bill-by-bill because the job market is highly centralized towards the corporate as any local business would fail in the hands of a bigger corporate try to eat up all the market shares as much as possible…so we’ve got this corporate norms here all over our country where people couldn’t start their own business and instead would heavily need to rely on either becoming a worker for a corporate or a beurocrats to which the position is extremely limited to only small factions of people minus the positions of elites’ kids you get a free pass to get in. Thus, the corporate norm almost take over our country and they could demand us to work heavily for a similar amount of salary for 10-20 years even the cost of living has massively risen each year especially during the Covid Pandemic.
Move Forward party is brainwashing children to be ungrateful to their parents. A lot of my Thai friends do not want to have children because of it.
I’ve wondered this myself. The fertility rate is astonishingly low yet it doesn’t seem to register with people that it’s a catastrophe.
Economy is bad but new generations also don’t want to sacrifice like their parents. The latest iPhone is cheaper than having a kid but I’m sure these are all things we will regret when we will be old and alone.