Older household headship and gendered pattern of poverty: Evidence from Thailand, Malee Sunpuwan Target journal: Asia Pacific Population Journal

Introduction  Why household headship is important? Socioeconomic dominanceSocioeconomic dominance  Why concerned with gender of household headship? Women almost everywhere are disadvantaged relative to menWomen almost everywhere are disadvantaged relative to men Feminization of poverty is linked with feminization of household headshipFeminization of poverty is linked with feminization of household headship  Why concerned with older household headship? Growing of aging population and older household headshipGrowing of aging population and older household headship

Household Headship in Thailand

Contradictory empirical findings  Female-headed households are worse off than their male counterparts  Widowed female- headed households are economically worse off than their male counterparts  There is no economically significant difference between male and female headed- households

Research questions  how does household poverty of older female-headed household differ from older male-headed household?  how do other factors (e.g. characteristics of household heads and household characteristics) influence older household poverty?

Data  The country representative data from the Household Socioeconomic Survey 1988 – 2004 Collected by the National Statistical Office every two years Collected by the National Statistical Office every two years

Method  Poverty line which constructed by the the Office of National Economic and Social Development Broad (NESDB). average per capita incomeaverage per capita income  Pooled logistic regression

Older household poverty by gender of household head

Results of Logistic Regression  There is no significant difference in poverty between male and female older households  Other variables that contribute in explaining older household poverty are: education and occupation of household heads, household size, Ratio of non-worker to worker, household debt and residential areas

Discussion and conclusion  support some findings from previous studies in Thailand which found that elderly males and females are not significantly difference in terms of economic measures (Knodel & Chayovan, 2008; Sobieszczyk, Knodel, & Chayovan, 2003).  seem to disagree with a concept of feminization of poverty.  women and men statuses in Thailand are not much difference (Limanonda, 2000; Richter, 1992; Richter & Havanon, 1994; Yoddumnern-Attig, 1992).  Further study on longitudinal analysis should be considered.