ABSTRACT
Two large national surveys in 1988 and 1933 provide new evidence on trends in family-size preferences in Thailand at a time when the Thai fertility transition is reaching its conclusion. Although the average preferred number of children has continued to decline, a resistant lower bound of two children is found for the vast majority of respondents, stemming, apparently, from a pervasive, although not inflexible, desire to have one child of each sex. Moreover, new evidence from birth-registration data indicates that the decline in the total fertility rate appears to have leveled off at about replacement level. These findings challenge the view that fertility in Thailand will continue to fall well below replacement level, and contradict recently expressed alarmist predictions of population decline in the foreseeable future.
PIP: Estimations, based primarily on the 1990 census, that Thailand's total fertility rate fell below replacement level in the late 1980s sparked alarm about extinction of the Thai race and calls to abandon public subsidies for family planning. Recent low total fertility is considered a temporary phenomenon, however, related to the rapid rise in age at marriage and first birth. Birth registration data suggest that the fertility decline levelled off, probably close to replacement level, during the first half of the 1990s and fertility is unlikely to fall below two children. Although the 1988 and 1993 Social Attitudes Toward Children Surveys documented a consistent trend toward declining family size preferences (64% of 1993 respondents, and 74% of women under 30 years of age, stated a preference for two children), only 5% desired fewer than two children. This lower limit of two children prevailed across regional, educational, and socioeconomic categories and appears to reflect a desire to have a child of each sex. In 1993, three-quarters of married women under 30 years of age expressed a preference for one son and one daughter. Despite this preference, Thai couples who fail to achieve this goal generally subordinate gender ideals to the prevailing preferred limit of two children. Although the Thai Government has succeeded in exhorting couples to reduce their family size, any abandonment of subsidized family planning programs could have a deleterious impact on poor families in rural areas.
