Abstract for a GIS conference

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SPATIAL PATTERNS OF KINSHIP NETWORK OF THE ELDERLY IN RURAL THAILAND

This study aims to investigate the patterns of kinship network of the elderly in rural Thailand with a case study of Nang Rong district in Buriram Province. Traditionally, Thai elderly in rural areas rely on their kin as care givers in various types of support such as meal preparation, personal care, and transport. Thus the elderly who can reach support provided by kin, especially children, should live with well-being. Without the information of existing kinship network who can be care givers, local health care services would not meet the actual requirement of which the number and proportion of elderly are increasing. To overcome this problem, the pattern of kinship network indicating geographic distribution of child-parent ties should be revealed.

Individual and household data integrated to geographic coordinates of households collected in 2000 are used to analyze by three approaches. First, social network approach is used to retrieve child-parent ties. Second, spatial statistics of point distance and distance band from neighbor count are to calculate geographic distance between the elderly's resident to the nearest child and average distance among neighbors. Third, the results are supported by qualitative study launched in the study area in April 2012.

It is found that more than 90 percent of elderly have at least one child in the village. Approximately, 40 and 20 percent of elderly co-reside with daughter and son respectively. Average distance among two neighbors is significantly related to the presence of their children in the village. On the average of nearest children, daughters are approximately 220 meters away from their parents, while sons live about 50 meters further than daughters do. This finding, supported by qualitative study, corresponds to matrilocal  tradition.