Thailand is now ageing. The share of people aged sixty or over to total population has
already reached ten percent since the early 2000s and is projected to reach twenty
percent in the following decades. The rapid changes in demographic structure are a
result of dramatic fertility decline and increasing longevity. Accordingly, composition
and living arrangements of Thai households have significantly changed. Thai
households are now smaller and older. Although large households i.e. three-generational
households are still a prominent living arrangement in Thailand, people in these days
tend to live in small households i.e. one- and skip-generational households. In 2007,
eight percent of Thai elderly people lived alone and twenty percent lived with just a
spouse. Meanwhile, more than ten percent are found in skip-generational households. In
such living arrangements, the elderly have responsibility for their dependent
grandchildren since there is no middle-age person in the household. The main reasons
for the increasing number of skip-generational households are out-migration of young
adults and expansion of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s. This situation is more pronounced in
the Northeast and North regions