Which Children Will Go to Secondary School? Factors Affecting Parents' Decisions in Rural Thailand1

Abstract This study examines parents' decisions about educating some or all of their children beyond primary school in rural Thailand. Their strategies often involve choices between sons and daughters and between older versus younger children. We find that the more children there are in a family, the lower the proportion who are sent to secondary school. Parents send more sons than daughters and more youngest than eldest children. The decision is sometimes associated with a specific “investment” strategy, but it may also reflect parents' ability to afford to send children beyond primary school. Important economic factors include children's perceived earning potentials, anticipated opportunity costs, and parents' poverty status. However, the issues of access to schools and the safety of children, particularly girls, are also critically important. These concerns are often weighed as heavily, or more heavily, than economic considerations.     

Migrant Interactions With Elderly Parents in Rural Cambodia and Thailand

This paper examines interactions between older adults living in rural areas of Thailand and Cambodia and their adult children. Thai data come from the Survey of the Welfare of the Elderly (N= 3,202 older adults and 17,517 adult children). Cambodia data are from the Survey of the Elderly in Cambodia (N= 777 older adults and 3,751 adult children). Results indicate that older adults in rural areas are not being abandoned, and supportive expressions such as visits and provision of material goods depend on living proximity, characteristics that relate to the needs and dependency of the older adult, and the life circumstances of adult children. These findings support an extension of an altruistic perspective that incorporates notions of vulnerability of older adults.     

Contraceptive Initiation Patterns in Thailand

Data from the Thailand Demographic and Health Survey permit a detailed examination of the pattern of contraceptive initiation in terms both of first post-marital contraceptive use and initiation of use following childbirth. A clear trend towards beginning contraception earlier in the family-building process over the course of the fertility transition is evident. During the earliest stage, contraception was first used mainly after a couple had already achieved their desired family size, but later on couples increasingly began use in order to space births, and most recently it has become common to begin use to delay the start of childbearing. There are two distinctive patterns of contraceptive initiation following childbirth. For women who chose sterilization, initiation occurs during the immediate post partum period, while for those who used other methods, use most commonly began shortly after the return of menses. As a result, few Thai women are at present unprotected against unplanned pregnancies for any substantial period of risk following childbirth. Beginning to use contraception early in the family-building process and rapid adoption of contraception following childbirth are now found in most segments of Thai society, testifying to the maturing of Tailand's fertility transition.