A Study of 2017 Secondary Data of the Happiness Among Thai Elderly

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to study the happiness of elderly people, and to study the factors contributing to the happiness of elderly people in Thailand. This study was a quantitative research.  It studied the secondary data from Thailand’s National Statistical Office (NSO) under the research project: “2017 Survey of the Elderly People.”  However, this study focused on the self-reported answers of 34,284 elderly people, aged 60 and above, regarding their perceptions on happiness during the past three months. Results indicated that the happiness rating mean of Thai elderly people was 6.98 (Out of the full score of 10.00) with standard deviation of 1.38.  When the happiness rating scores were categorized into three groups, it was found that the largest group (49.36%) had moderate level of happiness, followed by the group with high level of happiness (36.17%); while the smallest group (14.47%) had low level of happiness.  Furthermore, by using the methods of t-test and F-test to compare happiness mean scores, the test of significance revealed that there were a lot of factors statistically contributing to the happiness of elderly people. Those statistically significant factors were gender, age, education level, marital status, number of children, condition of employment, source of income, participation in important events, objective wellbeing, subjective wellbeing, the access to healthcare through welfare state, household size, and residential area and region. Nonetheless, according to the data, the factors regarding the availability of one’s own children, the older parents staying together with their children, and the being members of clubs/groups were not statistically significant factors contributing to the happiness among elderly people.