Among people aged 60 or older, the higher labour participation rate may be due to a
larger share of people in agriculture12 (see Section 3.2), which has no set retirement age.
Another possible reason is that work provides income for a larger share of older persons
living in rural areas rather than urban areas, while an old-age pension is more accessible
to urban residents than rural residents (see Section 4.1).
Labour force participation by region, as shown in Table 7, has been varied. A couple of
general observations can nevertheless be made. Firstly, labour force participation among
the total working age population has been higher outside Bangkok. This trend has been
pronounced among those aged 50 to 59 years and even more so among those aged 60 or
older. Secondly, while the labour force participation rate for the 50-59 age group declined
or remained mostly unchanged between 2000 and 2005, the rate for persons aged 60 or
older outside of Bangkok increased by 3.0 to 8.0 percentage points. This implies a recent
increase in the number of older persons working or looking for work.