Developing countries are growing old before they grow rich. Their societies are aging fast — without the pension systems and personal savings that support older people in wealthy countries.
Old Before Rich
Start with Thailand. One in six Thais is now over 65.
That is the result of a baby bust that began in the 1970s. Within about a decade, Thailand’s fertility rate fell from nearly six children per woman to just over two.
Today the rate is 0.9. That compares with 1.6 in the U.S., and it is less than half the level needed to keep a population stable.
Meanwhile, life expectancy jumped from 51 years in 1960 to 77 now — just two years below the U.S.
The United Nations calls a country an “aging society” when 7% of its people are over 65. It becomes an “aged society” when that share doubles to 14%.
The U.S. crossed the first line in the early 1940s and took about 70 years to cross the second. Thailand became an aging society in 2004 and an aged society just 18 years later.
The difference is the balance sheet underneath. America’s per-person GDP was $55,264 in 2014, the year it became an aged society. Thailand’s stood at $6,910 in 2022.
Vietnam, China and even India are aging at much lower wealth levels, too. And both Thailand and the U.S. are projected to become “super-aged” societies — at least 20% over 65 — around 2030.
One Village, Two Allowances
In a poor farming village west of Bangkok, Boonma Klahan, 57, starts each morning by washing, changing and feeding her 85-year-old mother, who has dementia.
She makes breakfast for her 87-year-old father. Then she rides her motorbike to her job as a health aide to 22 other elderly people. Three of them are bedridden.
The family gets by on the $90 a month she earns, her parents’ combined $50 government old-age allowance, and money sent by her adult children. “It’s getting more and more difficult to get by,” she says.
Thai governments have debated raising the old-age allowance, which runs $18 to $35 a month. They dropped the idea over cost. Seniors can apply for means-based support of up to $90 a month.
Beyond that, the safety net is thin. A country of 71 million people has only 25 government-run old-age homes where care is low-cost or free.
The World Bank forecasts that by the 2040s, the number of Thais over 80 who need assistance will rise sixfold — to around 2.5 million.
Communities are improvising. Social networks stay strong in rural areas, says economist Nopphol Witvorapong of Chulalongkorn University, and one government model pays families to “foster” seniors. Aran Inthakul, 71, a former mechanic who struggles to move after a fall, gets help from neighbor Lucksana Tohtrakarn, 67, who receives $60 a month. “I felt empathy for him,” she says, “because he was always alone.”
What It Means for Your Plan
Demographics is the slowest, surest force we track. It moves on a thirty-year clock, and it has never once been surprised by a Fed meeting.
The U.S. gets to fund its aging with a $55,000-per-head economy. The countries that cannot are about to test every social contract in Asia.
For the portfolio, that argues for owning emerging markets through breadth — broad funds, not concentrated bets on any one country’s outcome.
And it is a reminder closer to home. Long-term-care planning is a first-world privilege. It is worth actually using while it is still a choice.