Provincial Migration and Agricultural Population Change in Thailand

Abstract

This paper examined associations between inter-provincial migration and change in age structure, as well as the proportion, of agricultural population in Thailand during 1980 and 2010. Bangkok, the capital city, had highest net migrant numbers through the reference period, followed by its neighboring suburban provinces. Meanwhile, provinces with highest out-migrants were in agricultural Northeast region and most of them targeted Bangkok. The predominant urbanization stimulated inter-provincial migration with higher income opportunities, which can be seen from the relation between per-capita GDP growth and percent net migration of all provinces, consequently caused less agricultural labor proportion in rural provinces. Furthermore, the majority of migrants were 15-29 years old which raised aging agricultural worker proportion for whole country from 6.6 to 16.0 percent in only 30 years. The worst was found in out-migrating Northeast region, from 4.9 to 16.9 percent. A positive correlation coefficient of 0.61, between average percent out-migration and change in aging agricultural worker percentage, clarified that inter-provincial migration in Thailand has created aging agricultural society and may cause instability in Thai agriculture.