Child Adoption: An Economic View

Abstract

From an economic point of view, adoption is composed of the demand and supply of the adopted child. In terms of demand, it means that there are people who wish to adopt a child. On the supply side, there are those who relinquish their children for adoption. Adoption registration is, therefore, like an agreement or equilibrium of the demand and supply of an adopted child. Then, various factors that affect the demand or supply of child adoption play a role in determining the adoption decision. The objective of this research is to study various factors that affect the number of adoption registrations. The demand and supply equations of adoption are simultaneously estimated as a system of equations because it is assumed that the per capita income variable affects both the demand and supply of the adopted child, but in the opposite direction. The provincial data in Thailand between 2016-2020 are employed for the two-stage least squares (TSLS) estimation. The findings show that factors affecting the increase in the demand for adoption are: higher income per capita, higher education of women, single household, urbanization, and being a province with a large number of foreign workers or border provinces. As for the supply of the adopted child, it is found that the factors that cause parents to give up their children more are: the problem of divorce, increased number of females of reproductive age, problems of a father or mother dying of AIDS and disabilities of children. The factor that leads to the decline in the number of adoptions is miscarriage.