Thailand’s Poverty Situation
How Close to Achieving SDG Goals
Poverty is a significant barrier to human capital development and quality of life for the population, as well as to driving economic and social development. Ending poverty is therefore a key development agenda that the United Nations and Thailand prioritize and continuously implement to comprehensively improve the quality of life and well-being of the population across all dimensions. The focus is on ending poverty among vulnerable groups so they can access basic resources and services, be prepared to cope with disasters, and have resilience to deal with economic and social changes in a rapidly changing global context.
During 2016-2019, Thailand’s poverty situation improved, with the poverty rate decreasing from 8.61% in 2016 to 6.24% in 2019, resulting from economic growth and government measures to assist vulnerable groups.
However, in 2020, the poverty rate based on the poverty line increased from 6.24% in 2019 to 6.84% in 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic that severely impacted the economy and employment, significantly affecting the poor, low-income groups, and vulnerable populations.
Regarding access to basic services such as household electricity, household water supply, and mobile phones, in 2020, 99.01% of poor households had access to household electricity, up from 98.80% in 2019, as well as access to household water supply (89.20%) and mobile phones (66.77%). Additionally, poor households had 45.37% internet access and slightly increased computer access from 0.71% in 2019 to 0.80% in 2020, though this remains a very small proportion compared to non-poor households.
The government has implemented policies focused on assisting the poor, low-income groups, and vulnerable populations affected by the COVID-19 pandemic through important programs such as the “We Don’t Leave Anyone Behind” project, farmer relief project, vulnerable group relief project, purchasing power enhancement project for state welfare cardholders, “Khon La Khrueng” project, and “Thailand Has Jobs” project.
Additionally, the government established the Command Center for Poverty Eradication and Sustainable Human Development Based on the Philosophy of Sufficiency Economy (SJPC) in 2020 to address poverty in all dimensions, reduce inequality, and develop people of all ages using data from the Thai People Map and Analytics Platform (TPMAP), which is a government big data system that can identify problems and needs categorized by area and individual, benefiting the formulation of more effective poverty alleviation policies.
Although Thailand has made continuous progress in poverty alleviation, several challenging issues remain that require urgent attention, such as limitations in accessing social security systems and government services, limitations in data integration among relevant agencies, and incomplete distribution of economic growth.
Therefore, for Thailand to achieve SDG 1, all sectors, especially the government, must emphasize the importance of utilizing TPMAP and accelerate the development of poverty databases to use the data in designing appropriate policies and measures, including promoting the development of quality and comprehensive infrastructure and public services to distribute economic growth to regions and localities, which will lead to concrete improvements in quality of life and poverty alleviation.
Details of Thailand’s progress assessment for all 17 SDGs can be found at https://sdgs.nesdc.go.th/exhibitions/brightleapforward2021/report2016-2020/
Compiled by Mr. Kittisak Loertpoempon
Strategy and International Cooperation Coordination Division
National Economic and Social Development Council
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