Population Growth in Thailand

Ul11 v ulalllua Field Staff THIS FIELDSTAFF REPORT is one of a continuing series on international affairs and major global issues of our time. All Reports in the series are prepared by The writers who are full-time Associates of the Field Staff, spending long periods abroad and returning to the American United States periodically to lecture on the campuses of the universities and colleges that sponsor the American Universities Universities Field Staff. Field Staff Associates of the Field Staff are chosen for their ability to cut across the boundaries of the academic disciplines in order to study societies in their totality, and for their skill in collecting, reporting, and evaluating data. They combine long personal observations with scholarly studies relating to their geographic areas of interest. The American Universities Field Staff, Inc., was founded in 1951 as a nonprofit educational organization. Fieldstaff Reports have for twenty years reached a group of readers - both academic and nonacademic - who find them extraordinarily useful as a source of firsthand observations of political, economic, and social trends in foreign countries. In the 1970s, the Field Staff is undertaking a long-term program to scrutinize and report on man's response to the disturbing effect of modernization on his value systems. Studies of problems related to population growth and of problems associated with the institution of education will be published from time to time as Fieldstaff Reports. The Reports related to population growth are the product of a joint project of the American Universities Field Staff and the California lnstitute of Technology. Under the latter's spon- sorship, the project is engaged in a comparative study of the social and political matrices in which population problems occur. All publications under the imprint of the American Universities Field Staff (including articles published under the auspices of the joint project with the California lnstitute of Technology) are not selected to accord with an editorial policy and do not represent the views of the Field Staff's membership. Responsibility for accuracy of facts and for opinions expressed in this Report and in all Fieldstaff Reports rests solely with the individual writer. ALAN W. HORTON Executive Director About the writer: BREWSTER GRACE has specialized in Asian affairs for more than adecade. Having received his B.A. from Colorado College in 1961, he spent three years in Japan with the American Friends Service Committee. In 1964 he returned to Columbia University where he received his M.A. in Political Science and a Certificate from the East Asian Institute. His thesis, "The Japan Socialist Party's Attitude Towards the People's Republic of China," was published by the Columbia University's International Fellows Program in 1969. From 1967 to 1971 Mr. Grace directed the Quaker International Seminar Program in Southeast Asia under the auspices of the American Friends Service Committee. During this period he traveled widely throughout Southeast Asia. He returned to the region as an American Universities Field Staff Associate in 1973 following a year and a half of research at the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva on social and political issues related to Asian economic development. He currently resides in Singapore and reports on social and political affairs in Southeast Asia. University Members: University of Alabama Brown University .California lnstitute of Technology Dartmouth College. University of Hawaii Indiana University University of Kansas Louisiana State University . Michigan State University - Tulane University .University of Wisconsin SOUTHEAST ASIA SERIES Vol. XXII No. 1 (Thailand) POPULATION GROWTH IN THAILAND Part I: Population and Social Structure by Brewster Grace January 1974 The population of Thailand will in all likelihood substantial increase of Chinese immigrants, have double within the next 25 years. While this is not critically altered demographic trends. Whether the unusual in the context of developing countries, increase of births over deaths is due to an absolute Thailand may be blessed by an exceptional oppor- increase in births as a result of increased economic tunity to avoid some of the economic and social opportunity, incentive, or welfare or to a reduction problems such growth rates normally create. in the death rate as a result of improved health Resource utilization and productivity in agriculture conditions, it is clear that this natural increase has is relatively low at present and industrial develop- become ever more significant. Estimates suggest ment, predominately capital- rather than labor- that prior to 1946 the population grew at about 2 intensive, is limited. The purposeful expansion of per cent a year. Since 1947, government census industrial and agricultural production to increase data and careful unofficial estimates show an both employment opportunities and average in- average annual increase of 3-3.2 per cent. Since comes for the burgeoning labor supply will require there has been virtually no immigration after the considerable concern and dedicated attention to highly restrictive immigration law of 1949, this the nation's economic needs. Part I of this Report growth has been due exclusively to natural increase. will review some of the basic characteristics of Thai The successful postwar efforts to control diseases, population while Part I1 will focus on some of the the apparent general rise in nutritional levels, and implications population growth has for employ- the expansion of health services throughout the ment and income, and Part 111 will examine the country have unquestionably reduced mortality politics of family planning in Thailand. rates. Estimates of life expectancy at birth, in fact, have increased from about 35 years in 1937 to 54 Population Growth years in 1960, The 1970 census counted 34,152,000 people in Thailand as opposed to an estimated Concern for population growth in Thailand is of 5,500,000 in 1850 and 8,266,000 in 1911.l recent origin. Historically there has been a singular concern for the lack of growth. With the advent of The contribution of Chinese immigration to his- the British commercial and trade interests in the torical growth of the Thai population began first as midnineteenth century, the sudden and dramatic a mere trickle as early as the thirteenth century export demand for Thai rice created the acute with their arrival in Siam as traders. The mass awareness that an equally dramatic increase in rice southward movement did not begin until the latter supply was limited only by the lack of manpower to part of the nineteenth century when European open and cultivate new land. In the absence until colonialism opened Southeast Asia to international this decade of economic, political, or physical dis- trade and commerce. The resultant economic incentives to rapid population growth, only high mortality rates sustained the relatively low esti- 1. The 1970 census has been faulted by many demographers mated annual growth rate of 0.7 per cent between familiar with Thailand. Both the total number of 34,152,000 1850 and the first census in 1911. persons and the growth rate of 2.66 per cent are considered too low. Professional estimates suggest that there is little Since the turn of the century, however, two vari- reason to believe that the growth rate has declined below 3.1 ables, a relative decrease in mortality and a per cent. Copyright O 1974, American Universities Field Staff, Inc. [BG-1-'741 The physical regions of Thailand. The Central Plain com- prises Bangkok and Upper Plains. Source: Donald Fryer, Emerging Southeast Asia (London: George Philip and Son, 1970), p. 130. 98O O\ MALAYSIA \ 1 - - Thailand Source: Shand, R.T., Agricultural Development in Asia (Canberra: Australia National University Press, 1969), p. 104. opportunities were rapidly seized by immigrant absorbed at current levels of production and businessmen, laborers, and craftsmen. The exact resource use. Demographers and many of the numbers of immigrants will never be known, but economic planners in Thailand realize that to avoid estimates suggest that in 1850 the total inflow was major employment and resource allocation crises in around 15,000 a year and reached 40,000 a year by the future, concerted efforts must be made both to 1900. Between 1900 and 1930 this immigration may reduce population growth and increase overall pro- have totaled 1,200,000 while the total increase in duction and resource utilization. To appreciate in population was roughly 3,500,000. The actual more detail the mounting pressures, it is useful to number of Chinese in Thailand today is extremely describe briefly the basic resources and population difficult to ascertain as many have married Thais features of the five distinct geographic regions of or simply consider themselves Thai nationals. The Thailand-the South, Central, North, and North- 1960 census enumerates only 409,508 persons with east Regions and the urban region formally known Chinese citizenship while other estimates suggest as the Bangkok-Thonburi Metropolitan Area. that ethnic Chinese make up approximately 10 per cent of the population. The Central Region is the historical and contem- porary core of the indigenous Thai population and Population Distribution economy and consists of the fertile Central Plain as well as the immediately adjacent upland areas to In spite of the fact that rural population densities the west and north. The low-lying plain formed by average only 60-70 persons per square kilometer the Chao Phrya River is subject to annual flooding and rarely more than 200 in the most concentrated in much of the area which produces Thailand's re- areas, today there is a distinct concern that addi- nowned rice. On the higher ground to the west of tional population growth can no longer be the Central Plain are found many of Thailand's Water transnort on Chao Phrya River in Ayutthava-a city in the Central Pla~n.

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