Thailand halved multidimensional poverty in 7 years, but gaps in welfare remain

Jointly published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) based at the University of Oxford, the 2024 global MPI report features original statistical research on multidimensional poverty for 112 countries and 6.3 billion people. Rather than labelling countries as ‘rich’ or ‘poor’, the index goes beyond income to consider 10 different ways in which people experience poverty, including access to education, health, housing, drinking water, sanitation, and electricity, enabling decision-makers to target resources and design policies more effectively.

The report highlights the disparities that persist within and across countries: 28 % of the global rural population is poor compared with 6.6 % of the global urban population, for example. Critically, the authors put forward new evidence to add weight to the importance of investing in peace: of 1.1 billion people living in acute poverty worldwide, 40 % live in countries experiencing war, fragility, or low levels of peace Economic growth is not enough, it argues. Without peace, countries will fail to deliver on their common commitment to the very first Sustainable Development Goal, SDG 1: to end poverty, in all its forms, everywhere. 

The report adds to the voices calling for urgent global action to end war and conflict, which destroys lives, shatters infrastructure, rolls back progress, and balloons development costs – and to take all steps necessary to protect peace where it is most fragile. —Doing that, stress the authors, requires an integrated approach to tackling poverty, providing life-saving humanitarian assistance, early recovery, and building peace, with national and international actors working together.

“Conflicts have intensified and multiplied in recent years, reaching new highs in casualties, displacing record millions of people, and causing widespread disruption to lives and livelihoods,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator. “We must accelerate action to support people living in conflict. We need resources and access for specialized development and early recovery interventions to help break the cycle of poverty and crisis.”

Thailand global performance

The global MPI report reveals that Thailand is one of the countries that has made remarkable progress in tackling the multiple dimensions of poverty. Thailand halved the number of people living in multidimensional poverty in just seven years. The numbers dropped from 909,000 in 2012 to 416,000 in 2019, declining further to 352,000 people living in multidimensional poverty by 2022. This is attributed to higher years of school, improved nutrition, and better access to housing, cooking fuel, and basic infrastructure.

Thailand’s MPI score came in at 0.002, the lowest among the ASEAN countries that are included in the study—Vietnam (MPI score 0.008), Indonesia (MPI score 0.014), Philippines (MPI score 0.016), Cambodia (MPI score 0.070), Lao People’s Democratic Republic (MPI score 0.108), and Myanmar (MPI score 0.176 based on the latest available survey from 2015). A lower score means better performance, suggesting that Thailand is addressing the multiple dimensions of poverty better than the neighbouring ASEAN countries that were surveyed for the global MPI. 

However, there is still much work to be done. Despite Thailand’s overall progress, incidences of multidimensional poverty are 0.5 percentage points higher in Thailand than the incidences of monetary poverty, which means that individuals living above the monetary poverty line may still suffer deprivations in health, education and/or standard of living. Further, multidimensional poverty remains prevalent in rural areas at subnational levels.

The UNDP/OPHI Global MPI is designed to compare multidimensional poverty across countries. Many countries, including Thailand, have adopted the multidimensional poverty approach and adapted it to develop national MPIs, whose dimensions and indicators reflect country-specific challenges and priorities, to support national decision-making. For Thailand, while there are differences between the global and national MPIs, the overall findings are consistent with the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC)’s Multidimensional Poverty Index Report in 2021, which highlights that the incidences and intensity of multidimensional poverty are higher in rural areas, particularly in Southern border provinces experiencing conflict. Therefore, ending poverty in all its forms requires mixtures of top-down and bottom-up approaches to address differences in intensity and composition of poverty as well as preventing conflicts. 

This key message is consistent with Thailand’s new National Human Development Report, which argues that placing peacebuilding processes and people-centred approaches at the heart of how public institutions, private sector organizations, and individual citizens collaborate is key to accelerating poverty eradication and the achievement of the SDGs.  By tackling the root causes and consequences of conflict and poverty with data and determination, people living in poverty have a better chance to rebuild their lives and communities.