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February 15, 2018

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Thais try ‘magic pill’ to lift birth rates

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 a rapidly aging society.

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, health officials handed out folic acid and iron pills in pink boxes at six locations to entice couples to prepare for pregnancy.

The pills came with leaflets explaining how to be healthy in order to conceive.

Together with China, the country has the highest proportion of elderly people of any developing country in the East and Southeast Asia regions, according to World Bank figures.

Thai government has introduced various schemes to encourage pregnancies but, like in neighboring Singapore, whose birth rate is among the lowest in the world, they haven’t met with much success.

Thailand’s cash bonuses and tax incentives for people with children have done little to boost births but analysts said they weren’t generous enough to prompt Thais to have more children. They didn’t cover the real cost of raising a child, they said.

“At the moment Thai couples are having an average of 1.5 children. Ideally, it should be 2.1 if we are to maintain the population growth,” said Kasem Wetsutthanon, director of the Metropolitan Health and Wellness Institution.

Kasem said he hopes the pills, which he called “magic pills” will get Thais thinking twice about pregnancy.




 

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