Thai elderly who do not coreside with their children.

In this paper, data from a nationally representative survey of elderly Thais living in private households are analyzed. The analysis focuses on situations of the 756 elderly who do not coreside with an adult child. Only a minority of those elderly who do not coreside with an adult child were childless. The majority have at least one noncoresident child with whom they could potentially live. Daily contact with children for elderly who live alone was not significantly different from that of elderly who live with their children, suggesting that households that are classified as being separate may in fact function as single households or that at least one non-coresident child may live in very close proximity to the elderly person. Differences between urban and rural elderly in terms of type of support received from non-coresident children as well as likelihood of living near a non-coresident child are discussed.