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 Like several other Asian countries, Thailand is ageing rapidly.
Birth rates have dropped sharply from more than 6 children per woman
in 1960 to 1.5 in 2015, according to World Bank figures.
In Bangkok, health officials handed out folic acid and iron pills in
pink boxes at six locations to entice couples to prepare for
pregnancy. The pills came with leaflets explaining how to be healthy
in order to conceive.
Relationships and sex were previously a taboo subject but attitudes
have changed and they are now discussed more publicly. Still, health
experts say Thailand will have to talk even more about conception
and birth if it wants to boost its population.
Together with China, the country has the highest proportion of
elderly people of any developing country in East Asia, World Bank
figures show.
The population has peaked and will begin to decrease in 2030,
pointing to potential economic problems, such as labor shortages and
a smaller base of income tax payers as the working-age population
shrinks.
Successive Thai governments have introduced various schemes to
encourage baby-making but, like in neighboring Singapore, whose
birth rate is amongst the lowest in the world, they haven't seen
much success.
Thailand's cash bonuses and tax incentives for people with children
have done little to boost births but analysts said they weren't
generous enough to prompt Thais to have more children. They didn't
cover the real cost of raising a child, they said.
Thailand's 2015 birth rate of 1.5 per woman is below 2.6 births in
neighboring Cambodia and 2.1 in Malaysia. Health experts say the
birth rate needs to be 2.1 to keep a population growing.
'MAGIC PILLS'
Various reasons have been put forward to explain the falling birth
rate in Thailand, from higher living costs and work commitments to
the shift of the population away from farms, where big families are
needed, to urban centers.
Some blame a hugely successful free-condom campaign in Thailand in
the early 1990s – aimed at combating HIV/AIDS and which was widely
copied around the world - as a factor that has reduced the birth
rate.
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"From 1970 to 1983 there were an average of 1 million Thais born
each year. After that the birth rate began to decline. Now there are
just over 700,000 people born each year," Kasem Wetsutthanon,
director of the Metropolitan Health and Wellness Institution, told
Reuters.
"At the moment Thai couples are having an average of 1.5 children.
Ideally, it should be 2.1 if we are to maintain the population
growth," he said.
Kasem blamed changing attitudes towards the traditional family unit
for the declining birth rate.
"Now, many are thinking that it is a burden to have children, unlike
in the past when children were important for the family."
Nalin Somboonying, 27, who has a four-year-old child, said some
people feel they need material possessions first before starting a
family.
"I think nowadays people want to be ready first. They feel they must
have a house, a car, first before having a child," she told Reuters.
Satta Wongdara, 31, who with his wife picked up some of the pills at
a booth in Bangkok's Lak Si area, blamed long work hours.
"People nowadays work more so they have less children," Satta told
Reuters.
Still, Kasem said he hopes the pills, which he called 'magic pills'
will get Thais thinking twice about pregnancy.
"We want to get people to have more children."
(Additional reporting by Prapan Chankaew and Gavin Maguire; Writing
by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Neil Fullick)
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