INCOME COMPARISONS OF AGING POPULATION IN THAILAND

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to analyze impact of income comparisons in Thailand, especially, among elderly people. Due to happiness is the purpose of all man and be an area of interest studies in the economics. While one of major factors for having well-being is income. Moreover, many countries turn in be aging society with have rising life expectancy and aging population. According to these reasons, this paper uses cross-section subjective well-being measurement from HART project in 2015. From the survey, most of people were interviewed are in the level of rather satisfied in their lives. The individual’s characteristics also have role to have better well-being. These include being male, having high education, earning more income, and settle down with many children, etc. The result confirms that there are income comparisons in elderly Thai society after analyze with order logistic regression by assume neighbors as the reference group. People will gain utility if they live in average high-income area and will be happier from occupying a higher ranked position in the income distribution of the reference group. In order to look wider by generate median value in each sub-district with simple regression found that there is no evidence for it.

Key Words: Thai elderly; income comparisons; well-being