According to the information provided by United Nations World Population Ageing, it is found that Thailand is now at a transition to totally become an Aging Society. It is stated that any countries with more than 10% of citizens who are 60 years old and above from the total number of citizens are considered to be turning into Aging Society and will completely become Aging Society when the ratio of citizens who are 60 years old and above has risen to 20%

As for Thailand, there is a prediction that, in 2021, Thailand will completely experience Aging Society because the percentage of citizens who are 60 years old and above will exceed 20% of the overall citizens. Such a situation is the result of the technology and medical development that allows longer lives to citizens while the birth rate falls gradually.


When there are more elderly, there is lesser labor. There will be more foreign worker's movement. The Gross National Product (GNP) or National Income decrease which means this change in population structure will affect Thai society and economy significantly.

Nevertheless, Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) reported that many people have misunderstood that the Aging Society causes economic growth to decline inevitably. The example that is always used is the case study of Japan which the economic growth is very low at 1 – 2% in these last years. In reality, however, the decreased in Japan’s economic growth was caused by many factors such as The Lost Decade in 1990 which followed by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and the 2009 Global Financial Crisis as well as the mistake in financial policy from Bank of Japan. Therefore, it cannot be concluded that the Aging Society will always bring about low economic growth.

Nonetheless, if considering the stock market, which is a reflection of the economic crisis, it received an impact. Nikkei Index’s movement is around 20 000 points for these past 10 years and has never landed on the highest point of 38 000 points that it used to be 30 years ago. Thus, there is a question that if Thailand has set foot into Aging Society, how much effect will the Thai stock market receives.

For the Thai Stock Market, after analysis, in January 2018, the SET INDEX has increased to 1 838 points, marking the highest record since the very first trading in April 1975. However, SET became lower afterward and moved sideways to 1 600 – 1 700 points. The important factor for the change would be the trade war between the United States of America and China and the uncertainty of the resignation of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit). At the same time, the central bank all over the world had adjusted the interest rate policy to be lower and there was a tendency that it will continue to be lower. These mentioned factors affected the global economy to slow down at the same time.

The negative factors above caused the Thai economy to slow down as the export decreased, together with the Baht Appreciation, export companies were impacted. This made the profit of joint venture companies decreased while the fund flow from foreign investors decreases continuously. This affects the SET investment atmosphere because investors lower their investment weight to lower the increased market risk.

Nevertheless, the mentioned situation will happen in the short term because if the trade war ceased, Brexit reached its conclusion and other risks decreased, the global economy will positively grow. What follows is that the export section will come back to life, joint venture companies produce profits and investors will invest in the stock market once more.

The effect that Aging Society has on investment and saving would be the decreasing of investment and saving as most of the elderly are living on their saving. Also, there is increasing expenses on health-related factors and these cause their saving to decrease rapidly, and thus, they are more cautious to invest. This means that they will save their money with low-risk properties to protect their saving, for example, saving accounts or government bonds.

In any case, the government encourages saving system for retirement in both compulsory, such as social security fund and government pension fund, and voluntary, such as national savings fund, provident fund, RMF, and annuity insurance.

All these saving plans will invest money of the investors or members on their respective announced policies and one of them is an investment in SET. Therefore, even though investors do not directly invest in the stock, but they will indirectly invest through these funds. This allows SET to bear less impact when the Aging Society has arrived.

At the same time, with low-interest rate from low-risk properties which give low returns, some of the elderly, who save their money with low-risk properties that give low returns, might decide to invest in SET by choosing stocks that pay a regular dividend or invest through mutual funds. Moreover, nowadays, every section of SET has an increasing role to increase savings in retirement as well as products to meet the demand of long-term savings which is considered as an encouragement to trigger continuous investment in SET.

All in all, despite Thailand becoming an Aging Society completely in a few years, there is no guarantee that the Thai stock market will be any less interesting as the working investors are decreasing. This is because there are still other factors that will support the Thai stock market and keep it interesting.