Revisiting the Conventional Wisdom of Development, Sustainability and Happy Ageing: The Case of Thailand’s Data

This study revisits the conventional wisdom of development, sustainability and happy ageing. The first part explores the existing research frontier on how happiness proceeds with age and assimilates different notions of happiness which influence public policies and global demands. The second part extracts the statistics from the National Statistical Office’s 2021 Survey of the Older Persons in Thailand and presents stylised facts about the characteristics of Thailand’s ageing population in connection with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The third part examines happiness in older persons using ordered logistic regression. Happiness is represented by the reported scale based on the respondent’s own value judgment. The finding reveals that the happiness level significantly reflects socio-economic and health well-being and, thus, can potentially be intervened by political commitment and suitable public policies in concert with the SDGs. Happiness can be considered both as an outcome and a useful success indicator of public policies. However, the criteria for happiness can be very subjective. The public sectors must take precautions against political bias and inefficiency in incorporating old-age happiness into their development agenda. An effective policy coherence, particularly in Non-High- Income Countries (NHICs), requires a thorough understanding of old-age happiness in a more local areaspecific context which is an attempt of this study. Policy recommendations from the findings are summoned into four arenas, namely: (i) policy on education and lifelong learning, (ii) policy on income and old-age employment, (iii) policy on healthcare, public services and revenue raising, and (iv) policy on local area disparity.