Shrinking fertility rates and longer lives are changing the demographic landscape of countries worldwide, challenging not only the way we think about how to fund care for older people, but attitudes to ageing itself.

The population of Thailand is getting old. According to Viroj Tangcharoensathien, senior adviser of Thailand’s International Health Policy Programme, at the present time, just under 11% of the Thai population is over 60 years of age and the trend is rapidly rising. “The proportion of older persons in the total population is expected to reach 14% in 2015, 19.8% in 2025 and nearly 30% by 2050,” he says. Driving the trend is a combination of falling fertility rates (thanks in part to government provision of family planning services) and improvements in health especially of women and infants. “In a way we are the victims of our own success,” says Tangcharoensathien, noting that contraception prevalence has jumped from 15% in 1970 to around 80% at present, while life expectancy has risen from 56.2 and 51.9 years for women and men respectively in the mid 1960s to around 75.7/69.9 years today. So in what way is Thailand a victim?

The full report is available at http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/90/2/12-020212.pdf