Thailand's low birthrate is affecting enrolments at universities

[reader]

Based on the following article, ASEAN workers can be expected to represent a strong presence in the massage shops and bars as well in other sectors of the Thai economy well into the future.

From The Nation

Thai universities are struggling due to lower enrolments because of the sharp decline in the number of new births over the past several years, an education professional said.

Arnond Sakworawich, head of Business Analytics and Intelligence Program at the Graduate School of Applied Statistics of the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), said that most Thai universities have not been able to meet their enrolment targets.

The number of vacant seats are more than the number of students enrolling, forcing many state and private universities to organise 3-5 rounds of admission sessions, but still failing to fill all the available seats, Arnond said.

The current Thai higher education market is relatively small, with 200-300 universities taking in fewer students than their annual capacity. Additionally, there has been a continuous decline in the number of births over the past five years. Thirty years ago, Thailand had over a million births, but currently the number has dropped by half to 500,000-600,000 births per year.

In 2005, Thailand started becoming an ageing society, and became a full-fledged ageing society in 2022 when registration statistics showed that the elderly population had reached 12,116,119, accounting for 18.3% of the total population of about 70 million.
 

By 2027, Thailand is expected to become an ageing society at an advanced level, similar to Japan, with the elderly population accounting for 28% of the total population. The birth rate is very low, with only a 0.18% increase in population from new births.

As the number of Thai students entering universities continues to decline while the elderly population increases, it undoubtedly has an impact on the entire Thai education system, Arnond said.

State and private universities might struggle to survive in the next five years if they do not not adapt, possibly leading to mergers or closures, he said.

Thai universities have managed to survive by actively recruiting Chinese students. At some institutions, Chinese students make up half of the total student population. Approximately 3 million Chinese students have enrolled in Thai universities, he said.

[PeterRS]

Although this trend has been happening in several Asian countries for many years - e.g. Japan and Singapore - the problem in Thailand in the 1970s and 80s was too many births. In the early 1970s the high birth rate of 3.2% was simply unsustainable if Thailand was to become a more developed country. In stepped Meecha Veeravaidya, a half Thai/half Scottish economist trained in Australia, who realised that the first step had to be making birth control a subject that was not hidden under the carpet, as it were, but openly discussed. Through his Population and Community Development Association he made condoms not merely acceptable - but popular! He staged all sorts of stunts around the country including condom blowing contests and filling condoms as much water as possible and then dropping them from a great height. He had T-shirts distributed with stick figures involved in various sex acts and the message "condoms please". His original Cabbages and Condoms restaurant remains a fixture on Sukhumvit Soi 12 in Bangkok (excellent cuisine incidentallyl). Now there are a dozen more around the country and even two in the UK.

With his relentless advocacy, Meechai soon became known as Thailand's Condom King. And in many parts of the country, people still call condoms "meechais"! When HIV-AIDS came along, he intensified his efforts. For two decades he has been concerned that the younger generation is no longer taught about safe sex and the increase in the number of young people having unsafe sex. It was the first Thaksin government that reduced the funding for sex education in schools, something Meechai believes was a huge mistake. As he wrote some years ago, teenagers need to know that sex is natural, but “to master it rather than to let it master you.”

Reversing the population downward trend is unlikely to be easy. As the country and individuals become richer - and as has been seen in other countries, young men and women are putting off marriage till much later. They are also having fewer children. My partner's brother who lives in Myanmar got married aged 16. That used to be quite common in Thailand. No more.

[fedssocr]

as with pretty much every country that has a large middle class and a reasonable amount of education

And given the state of the world and the general economic precarity of a large portion of the population it seems exceedingly sensible for people to be having fewer children in most places

[hojacat]

21 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Although this trend has been happening in several Asian countries for many years - e.g. Japan and Singapore - the problem in Thailand in the 1970s and 80s was too many births. In the early 1970s the high birth rate of 3.2% was simply unsustainable if Thailand was to become a more developed country. In stepped Meecha Veeravaidya, a half Thai/half Scottish economist trained in Australia, who realised that the first step had to be making birth control a subject that was not hidden under the carpet, as it were, but openly discussed. Through his Population and Community Development Association he made condoms not merely acceptable - but popular! He staged all sorts of stunts around the country including condom blowing contests and filling condoms as much water as possible and then dropping them from a great height. He had T-shirts distributed with stick figures involved in various sex acts and the message "condoms please". His original Cabbages and Condoms restaurant remains a fixture on Sukhumvit Soi 12 in Bangkok (excellent cuisine incidentallyl). Now there are a dozen more around the country and even two in the UK.

With his relentless advocacy, Meechai soon became known as Thailand's Condom King. And in many parts of the country, people still call condoms "meechais"! When HIV-AIDS came along, he intensified his efforts. For two decades he has been concerned that the younger generation is no longer taught about safe sex and the increase in the number of young people having unsafe sex. It was the first Thaksin government that reduced the funding for sex education in schools, something Meechai believes was a huge mistake. As he wrote some years ago, teenagers need to know that sex is natural, but “to master it rather than to let it master you.”

Reversing the population downward trend is unlikely to be easy. As the country and individuals become richer - and as has been seen in other countries, young men and women are putting off marriage till much later. They are also having fewer children. My partner's brother who lives in Myanmar got married aged 16. That used to be quite common in Thailand. No more.

On the other hand, isn't Thailand one of the easiest place in Asia to get Prep for free or by paying very little thanks through some sort of royal-family supported schema? most of the guys I meet in Thailand make use of it and say they get it for free. That's in contrast to even much richer places in Asia like Singapore and HK when guys complain that getting Prep is quite expensive and most who use it buy it online, usually from Thailand.

Wonder if that has helped push down HIV infection rates in Thailand, which once were one of the highest in Asia?!

 

[PeterRS]

3 hours ago, hojacat said:

Wonder if that has helped push down HIV infection rates in Thailand, which once were one of the highest in Asia?!

No, PrEP arrived much later. It was the hugely effective campaigns originated by Meechai and the government education programmes they inspired that helped reduce HIV rates. Since 2006 anti-retrovirals have been included in the national health scheme for Thais which effectively made them free. The same was true with PrEP which is distributed through Community based Organisations (CBOs) led and staffed by LGBTQ individuals. It was felt that gay men would be more comfortable interecting with similarly inclined individuals.

But no sooner had international organisations started praising Thailand, the government changed tack. As reported in The Bangkok Post in February this year, the budget for CBO's was cut by 50% as it believed many of its patients could and should pay for their own medications. As a result, the Service Workers In Group Foundation (SWING) founded in 2004 is having to close such community clinics, including one on Silom.

The second blow is that the Ministry of Health decided in December last year that communiy-based organisations were not professional enough. The result is that these organisations which had previously distributed 70% of the PrEP given out in Thailand are now forbidden to do so unless they have a direct link to a public hospital. The same edict applies to HIV medication. This move was immediately condemned by SWING and the Rainbow Sky Association of Thailand. It has also been pointed out that the government never fulfilled its claim to provide 50% of the CBOs funding. International organisations made up the balance. Now doctors in hospitals will have to prescribe PrEP, alhough the cost to individual Thais is likely to be little changed. But many younger Thais, especially young men, do not want to be seen going to a hospital for HIV medication in any form.

The result of this and other government moves is that Thailand is no longer the leader it once was in HIV prevention and treatment. India and The Philippines have recently made greater strides through commnity-based organisations. As the Post article written by Stephen Mills, PhD, a Bangkok-based epidemiologist and the Regional Director for the USAID-supported EpiC project at FHI 360, also known as Family Health International, a US-based health and development organisation, points out - 

"the real losers here will be those Thais - often poor and stigmatised sex workers, gay men, and transgender women - who will have doors closed on them when they try to seek friendly and qualified HIV services. Thailand's quick pace to reach the end of its HIV epidemic has now slowed to a crawl and may soon go in reverse."
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2511266/thai-hiv-response-faces-setback

It's hard to find up-to-date statistics on the rate of msm who have already been infected with HIV in Bangkok and Thailand. But statistics from recent years do not make for pleasant reading. The US National Library of Medicine published a paper in January 2022. I quote - 

". . . integrated behavioral and biological surveillance (IBBS) among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Bangkok in 2003 found an HIV prevalence of 17.3%, further increasing to over 30% by 2005 and 2007. In biennial follow-up conducted through 2014, HIV prevalence among MSM continued to fluctuate around 25% to 30%, indicating ongoing HIV transmission at the population level. This high and increasing HIV prevalence was later confirmed from several other sources, notably the Thai Red Cross Anonymous Clinic (TRCAC), where 29.1% of 3485 MSM attending HIV testing and counseling (HTC) services from 2006 to 2009 were HIV-infected."

Even more worryingly -

"Receptive anal intercourse, lack of condom use, high levels of sexual partner turnover, drug use during sex, and finding casual partners via the internet have all been found to be associated with higher HIV prevalence and incidence among Bangkok MSM. In addition, fewer than half of MSM reported to have ever been HIV tested, and even fewer said to have actual knowledge of their current HIV status,"

There used to be an AVERT site with much more up-to-date statistics but I can no longer find it. Bit I do know that it confirmed by 2018/9 around 30% of msm in Bangkok are HIV positive.

Lastly, a 2017 Thailand AIDS Response Progress Report "Thailand Ending Aids" has worring statistics about those in the 15-24 age group. It highights errors in young people's sex education programmes and the increase in the number of STD's detected - a 79% increase in gonorrhoea in 10 years and a 102% increase in syphllis,

https://dearstraightpeople.com/2019/11/30/prep-guide-bangkok/#:~:text=Cost%3A The test%2C medical consultation,PrEP starts at 4%2C500THB.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8782340/

https://hivhub.ddc.moph.go.th/Download/Report/APR/2017/GARP2017 eng Final.pdf

I suspect it is certain that some in high risk groups and the better educated have no problem getting their free PrEP from hospitals and hopefully this is pushing down the msm HIV rates. The worrying factor for me are the edge of town saunas where bareback sex appears to be the norm and far from all the participants will be on PrEP.