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Thailand has been a global economic success story, transforming from one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia in the 1960s, to a modern and dynamic nation, and all within the lifetime of the current generation. However, growth has been accompanied by marked increases in economic inequality both at the regional and individual levels. In this context studying how relatively poor people appraise their situation ("subjective wellbeing") and how this relates to traditional "objective" measures of wellbeing such as wealth and basic needs is particularly relevant. This paper investigates the relationship between basic needs as defined by the Theory of Human needs (THN, Doyal and Gough 1991), material wealth and happiness. Specifically, we intend to answer the following research question: Are wealth and basic needs indicators always interchangeable when analyzing happiness determinants in low income settings? The paper focuses on seven communities in the South and North-east of Thailand with contrasting levels of access to markets and services. It challenges the common assumption that at low economic levels, wealth or income matter for people's happiness because they increase satisfaction of basic needs, arguing instead that wealth might contribute to happiness for personal or symbolic reasons, which are not related to the use of goods as basic needs satisfiers. Thus, it suggests that indicators of wealth and basic needs should not be used interchangeably when studying happiness determinants in low income settings.

Agriculture plays a key role in economic development, alleviating poverty and malnutrition, especially in the early stages of agricultural development. Several studies have demonstrated that neglecting agriculture, especially at the early stages of industrialization, can disrupt the process of economic transformation. This paper reviews the process of agricultural transformation in Asia through the framework proposed by Timmer (1988). It finds that agricultural transformation in Asia has followed a uniform pattern with unique characteristics in each stage. Moreover, the public sector has been instrumental in facilitating and guiding agricultural transformation. Emerging challenges in the agri-food sector in Asia have prompted some countries to promote a more inclusive and integrated approach to rural and agri-food system development. The next phase of agricultural transformation--pioneered in Japan, Republic of Korea (South Korea), and China--seems relevant to most countries in Asia and elsewhere. In all three countries, the role of the state in facilitating the next phase of agricultural transformation is highly instrumental in terms of policy, strategy, incentives, and resources. However, there is insufficient evidence to assess the efficacy of the transformative initiatives dubbed as the "6th industrialization in agriculture". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we address the often sterile and circular debates over relationships between poverty and deforestation. These debates revolve around questions of whether forest loss causes poverty or poverty contributes to forest encroachment, and questions of whether it is loss of access to forests or dependence on forest-based livelihoods that cause poverty. We suggest that a way beyond the impasse is to set such debates within the context of agrarian change. Livelihoods of those who live in or near forests depend considerably on a rapidly changing agriculture, yet agrarian contexts receive only background attention in popular, political and academic discourse over poverty and forests. Moreover, to the extent that agriculture is considered, little heed is paid to social, technical and economic change. We therefore address agriculture's changing relationships with the wider economy, otherwise referred to as the agrarian transition, and with the natural resource base on which it depends. The paper draws on the experience of Thailand to illustrate our key argument, and more specifically addresses the situation on the resource periphery through a look at the agriculture-forest interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southeast Asia is a development success story. By 2025, it is forecast that extreme poverty in the region will have been ‘eradicated’. Does this mean that the challenges so evident in the 1960s when the countries of the region began to pursue development have been met, and the objectives achieved? The paper makes a case for thinking afresh about development and the poverty project, recognising that development is never neatly achieved but, rather, re‐worked, re‐engineered and re‐imagined over time. This is done through identifying different categories of ‘poor’, each produced through different poverty‐making processes, measured and viewed in different ways, and their poverty addressed using different approaches and policies. With specific reference to the cases of Laos and Thailand, and drawing on longitudinal research in the latter country, it is argued that while economic growth does trickle down, it trickles down in quite discrete and often contingent ways. Furthermore, there is always development work to be done, because development creates its own work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method is developed to simulate the impact that changes in the composition of taxes and public expenditures may have on poverty incidence and inequality. The paper then applies this framework to Thailand. We find that significant effects on poverty can be achieved though moderate, once-only redistributions of the total tax burden towards taxes that fall predominantly on the rich, including personal and corporate income taxes, and comparable reallocations of public expenditures towards those that most benefit the poor, including health and agricultural expenditures. Moreover, combining pro-poor reallocations of taxes and expenditures can increase the poverty-reducing capacity of economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Rural financial markets have grown rapidly in Asian emerging market economies, thus contributing to economic development and the reduction of poverty. At the same time, however, the level of indebtedness of rural households has increased, making households more vulnerable to shocks. One of the reasons for rising household debt is the ease of borrowing simultaneously from a growing number of lending institutions. This paper addresses two major questions. First, does borrowing from multiple sources increase rural households’ risk of over-indebtedness? Second, do over-indebted rural households refinance their outstanding loans through multiple borrowing, running the risk of becoming trapped in a debt cycle? Employing a dynamic random effects bivariate probit model for a unique set of longitudinal household panel data from Northeast Thailand, this study examines the bidirectional relationship between over-indebtedness and multiple borrowing to determine to what extent rural households become trapped in debt cycles. On the one hand, the results indicate that households in Northeast Thailand take on multiple loans, which further increases their risk of becoming over-indebted. On the other hand, our model results do not confirm the widespread notion that over-indebted rural households use multiple loans to refinance unpayable debts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Thailand has achieved high levels of economic growth in recent decades, poverty at the local level has been increasing. Indicators of human development at the national level often mask the differences in well-being across communities. When responding to the need for sustainable development research, the heterogeneity of a population should be emphasised to ensure that no one is left behind. The Years of Good Life (YoGL) is a well-being indicator that demonstrates the similarities and differences between subpopulations in a given sociocultural context over time. The data used in this analysis were collected from Chiang Rai and Kalasin, which are provinces located in regions of Thailand with high poverty rates. Our main results indicate that the remaining years of good life (free from physical and cognitive limitations, out of poverty and satisfied with life) at age 20 among the sample population were 26 years for women and 28 years for men. The results varied depending on the indicators applied in each dimension of YoGL. Our analysis of the YoGL constituents indicated that cognitive functioning was the dimension that decreased the years of good life the most in the main specification. This study demonstrates the applicability of the YoGL methodology in investigating the wellbeing of subpopulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Thailand, economic inequality has long been a fact of life. It is a "general inequality of condition" that can be seen to influence all aspects of social, economic, and political life. Yet inequality has not always been associated with political activism. Following the 2006 military coup, however, there has been a deliberate and politicized linking of inequality and politics. The article explores a complex of political events – elections, coup, constitution, and the political ascent of Thaksin Shinawatra – that has given rise to a relatively recent politicization of economic and political inequalities, now invoked in street politics – a rhetoric developed amongst pro-Thaksin red shirts that challenged the status quo and generates conflict over the nature of electoral democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]