Population aging and macroeconomic adjustment in Thailand: Evidence beyond labor quantity

Population aging is widely expected to constrain labor supply and economic growth, yet its macroeconomic consequences depend on how labor markets and the broader economy adjust to demographic change. This study examines the short-run relationships among population aging, aggregate employment, and economic growth in Thailand using quarterly national data over a common 59-quarter analysis window covering 2011Q2–2025Q4, prior to model-specific transformations. The empirical strategy reassesses unit-root and cointegration properties before model selection and estimates stationary dynamic specifications using Newey–West heteroskedasticity- and autocorrelation-consistent inference, residual and parameter-stability diagnostics, and sensitivity analyses addressing interpolated employment observations and the COVID-period specification. The results show that increases in the population-aging ratio are significantly associated with weaker short-run aggregate employment growth. This relationship is robust to including an interpolation-period indicator, excluding the interpolated observations, and removing the COVID-period indicator. In contrast, after accounting for investment growth, export growth, and output dynamics, contemporaneous employment growth is not significantly associated with GDP growth, while investment and export growth remain positive and statistically significant correlates of GDP growth across the principal and sensitivity specifications. Taken together, the findings indicate that demographic pressure is evident in short-run employment dynamics, while contemporaneous employment growth is not statistically associated with short-run output growth in the principal GDP specification. The study therefore qualifies a simple labor-quantity interpretation of population aging and suggests that understanding its broader macroeconomic consequences requires attention to adjustment dimensions beyond aggregate labor quantity.