ABSTRACT
Thailand has undergone rapid population growth during the twentieth century. As a result of the government’s family planning policies, contraceptive prevalence in Thailand has increased substantially in recent years. This chapter discusses various factors that have influenced contraceptive method choice in Thailand. They include socioeconomic and demographic determinants such as age, rural-urban residence, education, labor force status, region, religion, language, and parity. The dependent variable was contraceptive choice, a categorical variable with a limited number of outcomes. Geographic region and religion have been found to be important variables in fertility and contraceptive use in Thailand. Availability and accessibility can also be measured by the travel time to the contraceptive sources. The negligible use of coital methods in rural areas indicates the effectiveness of the government program in providing noncoital methods, which are distributed primarily at the government clinics and hospitals.
