EDITORIAL
It is quite common to hear government policies criticised because they are bad, but rare to hear them torn apart because they are too successful. But that is what happened when World Population Day rolled around on July 11 and sociologists found fault with the country's sorry birth rate of 0.4%.
They also factored in the growing imbalance between male and female populations that could make the birth rate fall even further because the current ratio is 105:100 in favour of males. Then they warned of serious trouble ahead.
The country is aging rapidly. There is a higher life expectancy because of better medical care and each successive generation is smaller than the last. That does not sound scary because the process is a gradual one, but time passes quickly and the planning needs to start now.
Three or four decades ago, the country's birth rate was soaring, slums were sprouting and poverty ruled the provinces and much of the capital. The last of the ruling field marshals declared, just before his rank was abolished, that a high Thai birth rate was essential for the nation's defence.
Demographers and family planning experts disagreed and saw uncontrolled population growth as the way to ruin. All the warning signs were there: high rates of maternal and infant mortality, poor health care, the lack of proper nutrition, use of child labour and insufficient education and work opportunities. All too often young people in the provinces found their career horizons limited to work in the fields, factories or service industries.
Campaigns such as "many children make you poor" were launched, musical jingles coined and condoms strewn about like candy. The campaign to change the "big family" mindset, once seen as a social safety net for old age, and reduce the birth rate was enthusiastically backed by successive governments and acclaimed as a runaway success. Or so it seemed at the time.
Nowadays we realise it all went too far and worry, instead, about zero population growth and the social havoc that could result. More than half of the nation's 63.1 million people now live in cities and have forsaken the countryside in favour of urban pursuits. Our new concern is about birth rates eventually lagging behind death rates and the consequences of an aging population.
The average age when people get married is rising, with more choosing to stay single due to economic factors and lifestyle trends. Mahidol University demographers predict the number of children below 15 will decrease from the 2005 figure of 14 million to only nine million in 2035. At the same time, the workforce is expected to increase from the 41 million employed in 2005 to 43 million in 2015, but then fall to less than 38 million by 2035. The dependency rate between working people and the elderly will undergo drastic changes. In 1970, 12 working people took care of one elderly citizen, but by 2035 there could be just two working people bearing the tax burden for each elderly person.
Although demographers have been wrong before, it would be irresponsible to ignore the weight of evidence supporting their findings. There is a crunch coming and our social security system, subsidised health care programmes and pension and savings schemes face collapse under such a strain.
This is where long-term government planning is needed and it will have to go far beyond the usual fiscal stimulus safety valves, populist handouts and knee-jerk measures. Our best economic minds should be pooling their talent to create the firm foundation necessary for what promises to be a grey-tinged future.
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