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BANGKOK BUSINESS BRIEF April 2012
BUSINESS BRIEF
Vol. No. 1, Issue No. 5
1
April 2012
Daily business news briefs at www.bangkokbusinessbrief.com
Thailand’s ‘birth dearth’ has dramatic implications Inside
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By Dean Outerson
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While the Thai government finalizes plans to buy 900,000 tablets for schoolchildren in the Kingdom, one fact that may go unnoticed is that in coming years, fewer and fewer educational tools like tablets will be needed. The reason? Thai children are fast becoming an ‘endangered species’, as the country’s fertility rate has been in decline for decades. In other words, Thailand, like the rest of Asia, is getting old with alarming speed. It is common knowledge that
developed economies like Japan, the U.S., and Europe have had falling birthrates and greying populations for many years. But many developing economies are now facing the same crisis, and nowhere is that happening faster than in Asia. In an article in Foreign Policy magazine published in November 2010 titled, “Think Again: Global Aging”, Philip Longman said, “No society has ever experienced the speed of population aging… now seen throughout Asia.”
velopment Bank to respond. As reported in the Financial Times in September 2011, the Asian Development Bank published an update to its annual economic outlook report that highlighted the long-term changes and effects of Asia’s demographic transformation. According to Changyong Rhee, the chief economist of the Asian Development Bank, “Asia’s population is aging at a speed unprecedented in human history. As the population dividend that fuelled Asia’s labor-intensive growth becomes The ‘birth dearth’ crisis in Asia a tax, the region must find more has even prompted the Asian DeStory continues on Page 20.