The demographics of
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
paint a statistical portrait of the national population.
Demography
Demography () is the statistics, statistical study of populations, especially human beings.
Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and Population dynamics, dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups ...
includes such measures as
population density
Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term.Matt RosenberPopul ...
and distribution,
ethnicity
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
, educational levels, public health metrics, fertility, economic status, religious affiliation, and other characteristics of the populace.
Population
![Bevölkerungspyramide Thailand 2016](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Bev%C3%B6lkerungspyramide_Thailand_2016.png)
The population of Thailand was estimated to be .
Thailand's population is mostly rural. It is concentrated in the rice growing areas of the central, northeastern, and northern regions. Its urban population—principally in greater Bangkok—was 45.7 percent of the total population in 2010 according to
(NESDB). Accurate statistics are difficult to arrive at, as millions of Thai migrate from rural areas to cities, then return to their place of origin to help with seasonal field work. Officially they have rural residency, but spend most of the year in urban areas.
Thailand's successful government-sponsored
family planning
Family planning is the consideration of the number of children a person wishes to have, including the choice to have no children, and the age at which they wish to have them. Things that may play a role on family planning decisions include marita ...
program has resulted in a decline in population growth from 3.1 percent in 1960 to around 0.4 percent in 2015. The
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
forecasts a contraction of the working-age population of about 10 percent between 2010 and 2040.
In 1970, an average of 5.7 people lived in a Thai household. At the time of the 2010 census, the figure was down to 3.2. Even though Thailand has one of the better social security systems in Asia, the increasing population of elderly people is a challenge for the country.
Life expectancy
Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, current age, and other demographic factors like sex. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth ...
has risen, a reflection of Thailand's efforts to implement effective public health policies. The Thai
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
epidemic had a major impact on the Thai population. Today, over 700,000 Thai are HIV or AIDS positive, approximately two percent of adult men and 1.5 percent of adult women. Every year, 30,000–50,000 Thai die from HIV or AIDS-related illnesses. Ninety percent of them are ages 20–24, the youngest range of the workforce. An aggressive public education campaign begun in the early-1990s reduced the number of new HIV infections from 150,000 to under 10,000 annually.
The leading cause of death among the age cohort under 15 years of age: drowning. A study by the Child Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Centre of
Ramathibodi Hospital
Ramathibodi Hospital ( th, โรงพยาบาลรามาธิบดี ) is a university hospital of the Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University. and is a hospital capable of super tertiary care. It is a teaching ...
revealed that more than 1,400 youths under 15 years old died from drowning each year, or an average four deaths a day, becoming the top cause of deaths of children, even exceeding that of motorbike deaths. Thailand's Disease Control Department estimates that only 23 percent of Thai children under 15 can swim. The
Public Health Ministry said that from 2006 to 2015, 10,923 children drowned. Of the 8.3 million children aged 5–14 nationwide, only two million can swim, according to the Public Health Ministry.
The
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
classifies Thailand as an "aging society" (one-tenth of the population above 60), on track to become an "aged society" (one-fifth of the population above 60) by 2025. The
Fiscal Policy Office projects that the number of Thais aged 60-plus will increase from 14 percent in 2016 to 17.5 percent in 2020, 21.2 percent in 2025, and 25.2 percent in 2030. it is estimated that there are 94,000 employees aged 60 years or more in the workforce.
Ethnic groups
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
's ethnic origins are diverse and continue to evolve. The nation's ethnic makeup is obscured by the pressures of
Thaification
Thaification, or Thai-ization, is the process by which people of different cultural and ethnic origins living in Thailand become assimilated to the dominant culture of Thailand, that of central Thailand.
Thaification was a step in the creation ...
,
Thai nationalism Thai nationalism is a political ideology involving the application of nationalism to the political discourse of Thailand. It was first popularized by King Vajiravudh (Rama VI, reigned 1910–1925), and was subsequently adopted and adapted by various ...
, and social pressure, which is intertwined with a
caste
Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...
-like mentality assigning some groups higher social status than others. In its report to the United Nations for the ''
'', the Thai government officially recognized 62 ethnic communities.
Twenty million Central Thai (together with approximately 650,000
Khorat Thai
Khorat Thai, Korat Thai, Thai Korat or Thai Khorat ( th, ไทโคราช; ) refers to an ethnic group named for their main settlement area in Nakhon Ratchasima Province, unofficially called "Korat". Korat Thai people call themselves Thai Bo ...
) make up approximately 20,650,000 million (34.1 percent) of the nation's population of 60,544,937 at the time of completion of the Mahidol University ''Ethnolinguistic Maps of Thailand'' data (1997).
Thailand's report to the UN provided population numbers for
mountain peoples and ethnic communities in the northeast. Thus, though over 3.288 million people in the northeast alone could not be categorised, the population and percentages of other ethnic communities c. 1997 are known and constitute minimum populations. In descending order, the largest (equal to or greater than 400,000) are a) 15,080,000 Lao (24.9 percent) consisting of the Thai Lao
(14 million) and other smaller Lao groups, namely the Thai Loei (400-500,000), Lao Lom (350,000), Lao Wiang/Klang (200,000), Lao Khrang (90,000), Lao Ngaew (30,000), and Lao Ti (10,000); b) six million Khon Muang (9.9 percent, also called Northern Thais); c) 4.5 million Pak Tai (7.5 percent, also called Southern Thais); d) 1.4 million Khmer Leu (2.3 percent, also called Northern Khmer); e) 900,000 Malay (1.5%); f) 500,000 Nyaw (0.8 percent); g) 470,000 Phu Thai (0.8 percent); h) 400,000 Kuy/Kuay (also known as Suay) (0.7 percent), and i) 350,000 Karen (0.6 percent).
Thailand's Ministry of Social Development and Human Security's 2015 ''Master Plan for the Development of Ethnic Groups in Thailand 2015-2017''
omitted the larger, ethnoregional ethnic communities, including the Central Thai majority; it therefore covers only 9.7% of the population.
There is a significant number of Thai-Chinese in Thailand. Chinese origins as evidenced by surname were erased in the 1920s by royal decree. Fourteen percent of Thais may have Chinese origins.
[Barbara A. West (2009), Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania, Facts on File, p. 794] One scholar estimated that the Sino-Thai population, itself around 14 per cent of the total, was composed of around 56 percent
Teochew, 16 percent
Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...
, 12 percent
Hainanese
Hainanese (Hainan Romanised: ', Hainanese Pinyin: ',), also known as Qióngwén, Heng2 vun2 () or Qióngyǔ, Heng2 yi2 (), is a group of Min Chinese varieties spoken in the southern Chinese island province of Hainan and Overseas Chinese su ...
, 7 percent
Hokkien
The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages in ...
, 7 percent
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
and 2 percent other. Significant intermixing has taken place such that there are few pure ethnic Chinese, and those of partially mixed Chinese ancestry account for as much as a third to a half of the Thai population. Those assigned Thai ethnicity in the census process made up the vast majority of the population in 2010 (95.9 percent); two percent were Burmese, 1.3 percent other, and 0.9 percent unspecified.
Thus, the ethnosocial and genetic makeup situation is very different from that which is reported or self-claimed.
The vast majority of the
Isan
Northeast Thailand or Isan (Isan/ th, อีสาน, ; lo, ອີສານ; also written as Isaan, Isarn, Issarn, Issan, Esan, or Esarn; from Pali ''īsānna'' or Sanskrit ईशान्य ''īśānya'' "northeast") consists of 20 provin ...
people, one-third of Thailand's population, are of ethnic
Lao with some belonging to the
Khmer minority. They speak the
Isan language. Additionally there have been more recent waves of immigration from Vietnam and Cambodia across porous borders due to wars and subsequent poverty over the last few decades, whose immigrants have tried to keep a low profile and blend in.
In more recent years the Isan people began mixing with the rest of the nation as urbanization and mobility increase. Myanmar's numerous ethnic wars between the army and tribes who speak more than 40 languages and control large
fiefdom
A fief (; la, feudum) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form o ...
s or states, has led to waves of immigrants seeking refuge or work in Thailand. The makeup of
Myanmar nationals is complex and includes, for example, people of Nepali ethnicity who escaped Nepal, entered Myanmar, and then emigrated to Thailand.
Following the
2014 Thai coup d'état, Thailand's Department of Employment released figures showing that 408,507 legal workers from Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia worked in Thailand. An additional 1,630,279 Myanmar nationals of all ethnicities, 40,546 Laotians, and 153,683 Cambodians were without legal work authorization, but also worked and resided in Thailand. Some 180,000 Cambodians were said to have left Thailand post-coup due to crackdown rumors, indicating government figures were an under count. These statistics are merely a single snapshot and hardly authoritative as there is constant movement and much eluding of authority.
The language of the central Thai population is the educational and administrative language. Other dialects of Thai exist, most notably the
Southern Thai language
Southern Thai ( ), also known as Dambro ( ), Pak Tai (), or "Southern language" (), is a Southwestern Tai ethnolinguistic identity and language spoken in southern Thailand as well as by small communities in the northernmost Malaysian states. It ...
. Several other small
Tai
Tai or TAI may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*Tai (comics) a fictional Marvel Comics supervillain
*Tai Fraiser, a fictional character in the 1995 film ''Clueless''
*Tai Kamiya, a fictional character in ''Digimon''
Businesses and organisations ...
(not
Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
) groups include the
Shan,
Lue Lue or LUE may refer to:
People
* Andrew Lue (born 1992), Canadian retired football player
* Cachet Lue (born 1997), Canadian-born Jamaican footballer
* Lue Gim Gong (1860–1925), Chinese-American horticulturalist
* Lee Lue (1935–1969), Laotian ...
, and
Phu Thai
Phu Thai (Phuu Thai; Thai, Phu Thai: ''Phasa Phuthai'', ภาษาผู้ไท or ภูไท) is a Southwestern Tai language spoken in Laos and Thailand. Although it appears different from the Isan and the Lao languages, it is spoken in ...
.
Malay- and Yawi-speaking Muslims of the south are another significant minority group (2.3 percent), yet there are a substantial number of ethnic Malays who speak only Thai. Other groups include the
Khmer; the
Mon, who are substantially assimilated with the Thai, and the
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
.
Smaller
mountain-dwelling tribes, such as the
Hmong
Hmong may refer to:
* Hmong people, an ethnic group living mainly in Southwest China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand
* Hmong cuisine
* Hmong customs and culture
** Hmong music
** Hmong textile art
* Hmong language, a continuum of closely related to ...
and
Mien
The Yao people (its majority branch is also known as Mien; ; vi, người Dao) is a government classification for various minorities in China and Vietnam. They are one of the 55 officially recognised ethnic minorities in China and reside in t ...
, as well as the
Karen
Karen may refer to:
* Karen (name), a given name and surname
* Karen (slang), a term and meme for a demanding woman displaying certain behaviors
People
* Karen people, an ethnic group in Myanmar and Thailand
** Karen languages or Karenic l ...
, number about 788,024. Some 300,000 Hmong were to have received citizenship in 2010.
Thailand is also home to more than 200,000 foreigners—retirees, extended tourists, and workers from, for example, Europe, North America, and elsewhere.
Languages
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
is dominated by languages of the
Southwestern Tai family.
Karen languages
The Karen () or Karenic languages are tonal languages spoken by some seven million Karen people. They are of unclear affiliation within the Sino-Tibetan languages. The Karen languages are written using the Karen script. The three main branches ...
are spoken along the border with Burma,
Khmer is spoken near Cambodia (and previously throughout central Thailand), and
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
in the south near Malaysia.
The
Thai hill tribes
Hill tribe ( th, ชาวดอย, ชาวเขา, ) (Northern Thai language, Northern Thai: จาวดอย, คนดอย, ; 'mountain people/folk') is a term used in Thailand for all of the various ethnic groups who mostly inhabit th ...
speak numerous small languages, many Chinese retain varieties of Chinese, and there are half a dozen
sign language
Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...
s. Thailand has 73 living languages.
The following table shows first languages in Thailand with 400,000 or more speakers according to the Royal Thai Government's 2011 Country Report to the Committee Responsible for the ''
''.
The following table employs 2000 census data. Caution should be exercised with Thai census data on first language. In Thai censuses, the four largest Tai-Kadai languages of Thailand (in order,
Central Thai,
Isan
Northeast Thailand or Isan (Isan/ th, อีสาน, ; lo, ອີສານ; also written as Isaan, Isarn, Issarn, Issan, Esan, or Esarn; from Pali ''īsānna'' or Sanskrit ईशान्य ''īśānya'' "northeast") consists of 20 provin ...
(majority
Lao),
Kam Mueang,
Pak Tai
Hēidì () or Hēishén (), who is the Běidì (, Cantonese: ''Pak Tai'') or Běiyuèdàdì () is a deity in Chinese religion, one of the cosmological " Five Forms of the Highest Deity" (). He is also identified as ''Zhuānxū'' (), today frequ ...
) are not provided as options for language or ethnic group. People declaring one of these as a first language, including Lao, are assigned to "Thai". This explains the disparity between the two tables. For instance, self-reporting as Lao has been prohibited, due to the prohibition of the Lao ethnonym in the context of describing Thai citizens for approximately one hundred years. This was due to the promotion of "Thai" national identity to cement Siamese claims over the Lao city-states of what is now northern and northeast Thailand following the 1893
Franco-Siamese War
The Franco-Siamese War of 1893, known in Thailand as Incident of Thai solar calendar#Rattanakosin Era, R.S. 112 ( th, วิกฤตการณ์ ร.ศ. 112, , ) was a conflict between the French Third Republic and the Rattanakosin Kingdom, ...
and subsequent threats posed by French Indochina to the Lao tributary states of Siam. The birth of a homogenizing Thai ethnocentric national identity sufficient to begin transforming Siam from an absolute monarchy into a modern nation-state was achieved by assimilating the Lao with this Thai "identity", equivalent to what is now known as the
Tai–Kadai languages
Tai or TAI may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*Tai (comics) a fictional Marvel Comics supervillain
*Tai Fraiser, a fictional character in the 1995 film ''Clueless''
* Tai Kamiya, a fictional character in ''Digimon''
Businesses and organisation ...
, under a "Greater Thai Empire", and can be traced back to at least 1902. This homogenization began affecting the Thai census from 1904 onwards. The 2011 UN report data is therefore more comprehensive and better differentiates between the large Tai-Kadai languages of Thailand. As a country submission to a UN convention ratified by Thailand, it is also arguably more authoritative.
Religion
Theravada Buddhism
''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...
is the official religion of Thailand. 93.5 percent are estimated to be Buddhist; 5.4 percent Muslim; 1.1 percent Christian; and 0.1 percent other or have no religion.
In addition to Malay and Yawi speaking Thai and other southerners who are Muslim, the Muslim
Cham
Cham or CHAM may refer to:
Ethnicities and languages
*Chams, people in Vietnam and Cambodia
**Cham language, the language of the Cham people
***Cham script
*** Cham (Unicode block), a block of Unicode characters of the Cham script
*Cham Albania ...
of Cambodia in recent years began a large scale influx into Thailand. The government permits religious diversity, and other major religions are represented, though there is much social tension, especially in the Muslim south.
Spirit worship and
animism
Animism (from Latin: ' meaning 'breath, Soul, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct Spirituality, spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—Animal, animals, Plant, plants, Ro ...
are widely practiced.
People with disabilities
According to Thailand's Social Development and Human Security Ministry, about 1.6 million Thais have some form of disability. That amounts to 2.4 percent of the population of 68 million. About half, 48 percent, are physically handicapped. Other disabilities include:
hearing loss
Hearing loss is a partial or total inability to Hearing, hear. Hearing loss may be present at birth or acquired at any time afterwards. Hearing loss may occur in one or both ears. In children, hearing problems can affect the ability to Language ...
, 18 percent;
visual impairment
Visual impairment, also known as vision impairment, is a medical definition primarily measured based on an individual's better eye visual acuity; in the absence of treatment such as correctable eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment ...
, 11 percent;
mental disorder
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
, seven percent;
intellectually challenged, seven percent;
autism
The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...
, 0.54 percent.
Expatriates
The largest foreign community are the Burmese, followed by the Cambodians and Laotians.
[
, Thai government data showed that over 770,900 Cambodian migrants, meaning five percent of the total population of Cambodia, currently live in Thailand. Some NGOs estimate that the actual number may be up to one million.
Laotians are particularly numerous considering the small size of Laos' population, about seven million, due to the lack of a language barrier. The Chinese expatriate employee population in Thailand, mostly Bangkok, has doubled from 2011-2016, making it the largest foreign community in Thailand not originating in a neighbouring country. Chinese hold 13.3 percent of all work permits issued in Thailand, an increase of almost one-fifth since 2015. Japanese expats are on the decline, and now rank sixth, behind Chinese and British. One in every four foreigners working in Thailand formerly were Japanese, and the figure has now dropped slightly to 22.8 percent of the foreign workforce as of late-2016.
Foreign residents in Thailand, according to the 2010 Census. It was found that there were 2,581,141 of foreign origins, composing around 3.87 percent of Thailand's population. Migrants from ]Cambodia
Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand t ...
, Laos
Laos (, ''Lāo'' )), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, French: République démocratique populaire lao), is a socialist ...
and Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
, the most prevalent, accounted for 1.8 million foreigners.
Research by Kasikorn Bank
Kasikornbank ( th, ธนาคารกสิกรไทย, , Teochew: Khai-thài Ngîng-hâng, , stylised in all caps), often stylised as KBank and formerly known as the Thai Farmers Bank is a banking group in Thailand. KBank was establishe ...
estimated that in 2016, there were 68,300 foreigners over 50 years old—the minimum age for a retirement visa—holding long-stay visas living in Thailand, a 9% increase over the preceding two years. In 2018, Thailand issued almost 80,000 retirement visas, an increase of 30% from 2014, with Britons accounting for the majority of the new visas.
In 2010 there were 27,357 Westerners living in the northeastern region, 90 percent living with Thai spouses, according to research by the College of Population Studies at Chulalongkorn University
Chulalongkorn University (CU, th, จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย, ), nicknamed Chula ( th, จุฬาฯ), is a public and autonomous research university in Bangkok, Thailand. The university was originally fo ...
in 2017.
Vital statistics
Current vital statistics
Births and deaths
Life expectancy at birth
Average life expectancy
Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, current age, and other demographic factors like sex. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth ...
at birth of the total population.
Total fertility rate
Total fertility rate
The total fertility rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if:
# she were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through her lifetime
# she were t ...
(TFR) in Thailand by region and year:
Total fertility rate
The total fertility rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if:
# she were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through her lifetime
# she were t ...
(TFR) in Thailand by province
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...
as of 2010:
Population pyramids
Data (The World Bank)
Life expectancy at birth
*total: 75 years (2017)
*male: 71 years (2017)
*female: 79 years (2017)
Mortality rate, under-5 (deaths per 1,000 live births)
*12.2 deaths per 1,000 live births (2016)
Adolescent birth rate
*44.6 births (births per 1,000 girls aged 15–19) (2015)[
]
''CIA World Factbook'' demographic statistics
The following demographic statistics are from the ''CIA World Factbook
''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print version is available ...
'', unless otherwise indicated.
Population
The population of Thailand is approximately 69.7 million people, with an annual growth rate of about 0.3 percent. In addition to Thais, it includes ethnic Chinese, Malay, Lao, Burmese, Cambodians, and Indians, among others. The 2010 decennial census revealed a population of 65,981,600 (up from 60,916,441 in 2000). Post-census adjustments are being made to lower reporting errors.
Age structure
: ''0–14 years:'' 21.2 percent (male 7,104,776/female 6,781,453)
: ''15–64 years:'' 70.3 percent (male 22,763,274/female 23,304,793)
: ''65 years and over:'' 8.5 percent (male 2,516,721/female 3,022,281) (2008 est.)
: ''0–14 years:'' 19.9 percent (male 6,779,723/female 6,466,625)
: ''15–64 years:'' 70.9 percent (male 23,410,091/female 23,913,499)
: ''65 years and over:'' 9.2 percent (male 2,778,012/female 3,372,203) (2011 est.)
: ''0-14 years:'' 17.41 percent (male 6,062,868/female 5,774,631)
: ''15-24 years:'' 14.78 percent (male 5,119,387/female 4,927,250)
: ''25-54 years:'' 46.69 percent (male 15,675,425/female 16,061,864)
: ''55-64 years:'' 11.26 percent (male 3,600,695/female 4,053,977)
: ''65 years and over:'' 9.86 percent (male 2,935,703/female 3,764,605) (2015 est.)
According to the UN, the proportion of those over 65 will be 19.5 percent in 2030 and 25 percent by 2040.
National Statistical Office (NSO) figures for 2017 show that 17% (11.3 million) of the Thai population of 66.18 million persons are children under 15; 65.1% (43.09 million) are working age (16–59 years) adults; and 15.5% (10.22 million) are elderly (60+ years).
Population growth rate
* 0.615 percent (2009 est.)
* 0.566 percent (2011 est.)
Net migration rate
0 migrants/1,000 population (2011 est.)
Sex ratio
: ''At birth:'' 1.06 males/female
: ''Under 15 years:'' 1.05 males/female
: ''15–64 years:'' 0.98 males/female
: ''65 years and over:'' 0.83 males/female
: ''Total population:'' 0.98 males/female (2009 est.)
Life expectancy at birth
: ''Total population:'' 73.6 years
: ''Male:'' 71.24 years
: ''Female:'' 76.08 years (2011 est.)
Ethnic groups
The CIA World Factbook lists Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
at 95.9 percent, Burmese 2 percent, others 1.3 percent, unspecified 0.9 percent. While 2 percent Burmese is accurate and reflects mainly illegal migrants, the Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
figure of 95.9 percent figures is not referenced and contradicts more detailed 2011 Royal Thai Government data which suggests ethnic Central Thai 34.1 percent, ethnic Lao 24.9 percent, ethnic Khon Muang
Khon ( th, โขน, ) is a dance drama genre from Thailand. Khon has been performed since the Ayutthaya Kingdom.
It is traditionally performed solely in the royal court by men in masks accompanied by narrators and a traditional piphat ensemb ...
9.9 percent, ethnic Pak Tai
Hēidì () or Hēishén (), who is the Běidì (, Cantonese: ''Pak Tai'') or Běiyuèdàdì () is a deity in Chinese religion, one of the cosmological " Five Forms of the Highest Deity" (). He is also identified as ''Zhuānxū'' (), today frequ ...
7.4 percent, ethnic Khmer 2.3 percent, ethnic Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
1.5 percent.
Literacy
: ''Definition:'' age 15 and over can read and write
: ''Total population:'' 92.6 percent
: ''Male:'' 94.9 percent
: ''Female:'' 90.5 percent (2002 est.)
References
External links
World Bank: Thailand
{{DEFAULTSORT:Demographics Of Thailand
Demographics of Asia