AIDS and the elderly of Thailand: projecting familial impacts.

We apply aggregate demographic analysis and computer microsimulation to project the number of older Thais who will lose children to AIDS during their own lifetimes and to assess their involvement with ill children through caregiving and coresidence. Parental bereavements from AIDS are predicted to peak at around 80,000 per year between 2003 and 2007. Despite an HIV prevalence of only 2%, 13% of Thais who were over age 50 as of 1995 are likely to experience the loss of at least one adult child to AIDS, and 12% of them will lose multiple children. The chance of losing an adult child during one's lifetime will be 70% higher than if there were no AIDS epidemic.