ABSTRACT
A. Booth and his associates, reach very different conclusions based not only on their Toronto analyses, but also on their review of the results from Chicago. They conclude that "The findings support, not reject, the contention that household crowding is a variable of minimal importance in explaining pathology, at least in modern industrial society. There are several reasons for anticipating that, in the context of Thai culture, crowding effects might be relatively modest. First, the typical household structure found in Bangkok suggests that there may be normative tolerance for household crowding. High levels of household crowding may simply provide protection from loneliness and offer many opportunities for social interaction. The relationship between objective and subjective crowding is a modest one. Objective crowding has a small but significant effect on a number of aspects of psychological well-being, including psychological distress, unhappiness, lethargy, and loneliness, with the control variables included in the model.
