Thailand hopes ‘magic pills’ will boost low birth rate

Bangkok: Thailand has tried cash bonuses and tax incentives to boost the country’s birth rate, but on Valentine’s Day it adopted a new approach – handing out vitamin pills.

Like several other Asian countries, Thailand is ageing rapidly. Birth rates have dropped sharply from more than six children per woman in 1960 to 1.5 in 2015, according to World Bank figures.

In Bangkok yesterdat, health officials handed out folic acid and iron pills in pink boxes at six locations to entice couples to get pregnant. The pills came with leaflets explaining how to be healthy to conceive.

Relationships and sex were previously a taboo subject, but attitudes have changed and they are now discussed more publicly.

Together with China, the country has the highest proportion of elderly people of any developing country in East Asia, World Bank figures showed.

The population has peaked and will begin to decrease in 2030, pointing to potential economic problems such as labour shortages and a smaller base of income tax payers as the working-age population shrinks.

Successive Thai governments have introduced various schemes to encourage baby-making, but they have not seen much success.

Thailand’s cash bonuses and tax incentives for people with children have done little to boost births, with analysts saying they were not generous enough.

Thailand’s 2015 birth rate of 1.5 per woman is below 2.6 births in neighbouring Cambodia and 2.1 in Malaysia. Health experts say the birth rate needs to be 2.1 to keep a population growing.

Various reasons have been put forth to explain the falling birth rate, from higher living costs and work commitments to the shift of the population away from farms, where big families are needed, to urban centres.

Some blame a hugely successful free-condom campaign in Thailand in the early ‘ 90s aimed at combatting HIV/AIDS.