Abstract
The average annual rate of population increase for Thailand during the 1960s has been estimated to be as high as 3 percent after adjusting for census underenumeration. Comparisons of data collected from a series of fertility surveys conducted in Thailand since the end of the 1960s have increasingly indicated the start of a steady decline in fertility both in urban and rural areas of the country. A report states that "it seems relatively safe to conclude that Thailand is now in the midst of a major transition from high to low levels of fertility" [Knodel et al . 1978 : 46]. Therefore, the 1960s can be regarded as the last decade for Thailand to experience an explosively high growth of population.
This growth, however, was never uniform with the same high rate all over the country, but was accompanied by a large subnational diversity among different regions. The intercensal growth rates for the population in individual districts (amphur) from 1960 to 1970 range widely from as high as 10 percent or more to a level below zero percent on an annual average.
When the whole Kingdom was divided into 27 divisions according to physiographic features and the levels of population density at the 1960 census, it was found that there were distinct geographic differences in the level of the overall population growth rate as well as the level and sex-age pattern of the net migration rate. A negative correlation is conspicuous between the population density at the 1960 census and the rate of population increase from the 1960 to 1970 censuses, if the Bangkok metropolitan area is excluded from calculation. The greater part of the increase in the nation's population during the 1960s was absorbed by the rural areas, with the highest growth rate in the sparsely inhabited hill regions.
Literature on the population growth and migration of Thailand tend to direct too much attention to the concentration of population in the metropolitan area and less to the marginal rural areas which are still heavily burdened with absorbing the nation's population increase.
