Rural-urban migration trend and employment status : a case study in Bangkok Metropolis

Abstract

This study treated rural-urban migration as the in-migrants from other provinces into the Bangkok Metropolitan Area. The various social and economic problems occurred in the capital city are partly due to the rapid population growth. The tremendous influx of in-migrants to the Bangkok Metropolis over the past two decades may contributed to the growth rate and may turn to create greater problems. The rural in-migrants are predominantly single young men and women. The employed in-imgrants in the Bangkok Metropolis are mainly engaged in work status as private employee particularly in the service industry. The next groups are employed as own account and unpaid family workers, respectively. Most of them are characterised as wage earners with low education attainment. Consequently, they have no job security. Seasonal variation plays an important role on in-migration trend to the capital city. Besides, size of population, income, or gross domestic product and average distance between place of origin and the Bangkok Metropolis are also the major determinant factors on in-migration trend. Migration cycle inversely varies with the business cycle of the country, i.e. the peak periods in-flow of migrants to the Bangkok Metropolis are coincident with the trough periods of economic cycle during the year 1973 to 1985. However, the movement of rural residents to the capital city tends to be less fluctuated during the period of 1980-1990 than the period of 1973-1979. This coincides with the changing of Thai economy from agricultural base in the first period to industrial sector in the latter period.