One person on our trip who has spent a lot of time in Cambodia remarked, as we drove down to Siem Reap, that you're seeing a lot fewer monks here than you used to. Her best guess as to why is peace and economic growth; becoming a monk is a way to survive when you have nowhere else to go.
I can't find any good figures on the number of monks in Cambodia. On the other hand, I can't find any good figures on anything here; even GDP figures are fairly crude guesses about what is going on. It's better to watch things like infant mortality and literacy, which are comparitively easy to count. And perhaps we should also be counting the number of orange-wrapped figures in every crowd.
I remember being blown away by the number of monks in Burma; something like 300,000? Anyway, that would seem to offer some corroboration.
People offer the same explanation for the numerical decline of Catholic monks and nuns in the West. I think the proposed cause-and-effect relationship is valid: a better economy does often lead to fewer vowed religious (or whatever the Buddhist term is). But I think the causal explanation offered - i.e., people only become monks or nuns when they have nowhere else to go - is wrong.
My counter-explanation is this: in static or declining economies, people are very conscious of the frailty of existence and the fact that much of life is beyond our control. In times like that, religion is a part of most lives, and a vowed religious life will appeal to anyone who spends a lot of time thinking of the vagaries of this world. The appeal certainly extends to relatively privileged people, and not just "people who have nowhere else to go": St. Francis and the Buddha are good examples here.
In contrast, when times are good, we think we control more than we do. Religion fades into the background as a social force, and religious orders decline accordingly.
Your colleague's explanation demeans religious life (I hope unconsciously) by suggesting that only desperate people consider it. I submit that a more careful look at the sorts of people who enter monasteries and convents will reveal that many monks and nuns are materially comfortable when they enter.
even GDP figures are fairly crude guesses about what is going on
Is there a country in the world for which this isn't true?
For example, in NZ, the government did a survey of people receiving NZ superannuation. A fair number of the people surveyed reported incomes lower than any rate of NZ superannuation. NZ super is not means-tested (there are different rates depending on if you are married, single but sharing a house, single and alone, and it comes pre-tax and post-tax, but enough people were reporting incomes significantly lower than the lowest post-tax rate to bias the results).
Ever since then I've been a lot more skeptical of statistics.
I remember being blown away by the number of monks in Burma; something like 300,000? Anyway, that would seem to offer some corroboration.
On the other hand, Freddie, you don't see as many monks in Burma nowadays. So, clearly, things are looking up.
not all buddhist monks are monks for life - it's just a station in life before one gets married.
Sri mentions something important, many (most?) Buddhist monks are not there for life. Most men in Thailand (and I assume Burma and Cambodia) spend some time as monks and any man may enter a monastery for a few months and it's not at all unusual for man with personal problems to do so (a SE Asian form of male psychotherapy?)