Shrinking of Intergenerational Care Givers for Elderly Parents in a Rural Area in Thailand

This study investigates the availability of children as intergenerational care givers for elderly parents. Children are the elderly’s main resources and care givers due to increasing number and proportion of ageing population with insufficient social welfare in Thailand. However, an evidence of intergenerational support within families is barely found, while the declining potential support ratio indicating the vulnerable social support of tax system was reported. This study, therefore, analyzed longitudinal data collected in a rural area in the northeastern Thailand to show the availability of children living with their parents in the village by comparing between two generations. Matrix operation through kinship network was deployed to find the relationship between female elderly parents and their children. In addition, multivariate regression was used to predict factors affecting the availability of children living in the village. A result revealed that, in 2000, the percentage of women with son living in the village was not different between women in generation 1 and 2, but the percentage of the generation-2 women with daughter dramatically dropped about 18 percent. Most existing children in the village are in school age or work in the agricultural sector, which has the highest rate of out-migration from this region.