Development and Demographic Change in Nang Rong, Thailand

This research explores the relationship between the social and economic changes associated with the development process and demographic change in Nang Rong, a relatively poor district in Thailand's Northeast province. I focus on the ways in which the development process encourages changes in fertility and migration behavior, and how these two demographic processes are related to each other. By exploring this relationship in a context of rapid social, economic, and demographic change, and by focusing on a much finer level of analysis than is typical (individual, household, and community), this research provides a number of insights into the relationship between development and demographic behavior that may be applied in other situations of rapid change. This dissertation is organized around three related studies. The first examines how the development process influences fertility and migration behavior, drawing on a modified version of the Multiphasic Response Theory to guide the analyses. I use a parallel modeling strategy using logistic regression techniques to explore both how fertility and migration behavior are responsive to development, and how these are related. The results lend support to the validity of the theoretical model, and suggest it may be successfully applied in other settings. The second study focuses on the ways in which fertility behavior is influenced by migration status and lifetime experience with urban residence, focusing on both how this differs for short- and long-term migrants and for individuals at different stages of family formation. I use event history analysis to explore this issue, and specifically examine the role of migrant selectivity and the potential endogeneity of migration and fertility in shaping this relationship. The results suggest that the effect of migration in this setting is contingent on family formation stage, and is closely tied to marriage. The final study examines how the contraceptive behavior of women in Nang Rong is influenced by both past and present context, focusing on the role of community contraceptive use. The results indicate that behavior is influenced primarily by current context, but that past context continues to exert an influence on behavior through 'setting the stage' for current context