Inequality, Household Debt, and the Role of Social Protection in Thailand

Piyaporn Chote, Corinne Delechat, Seunghwan Kim, Ying Xu and Tamon Yungvichit

No 2025/248, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This study examines the nexus between inequality, household debt, and social protection in Thailand, focusing on their interrelation during the COVID-19 shock. Using data from the Thailand Household Socio-Economic Surveys of 2019, 2021, and 2023, we apply the Recentered Influence Function regression and decomposition method to identify the drivers of inequality in Thailand and demonstrate how the pandemic, despite its severe economic impact, led to a decline in income inequality through these drivers. Our analysis highlights the role of social protection, showing that social assistance helped reduce income inequality, while social insurance exerted the opposite effect in Thailand. Additionally, we investigate how income inequality and disparities in acess to social protection affected household debt dynamics during the pandemic. Our findings show that lower-income households were more likely to be indebted following the pandemic, possbly reflecting increased income shortfalls. Social assistance alleviated the pandemic’s effects on household debt by easing income constraints, whereas social insurance exacerbated them.

Keywords: COVID-19; inequality; household debt; social protection; Imf working papers; pandemic's effect; inequality in Thailand; pandemic shock; Income inequality; Income; Tax allowances (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2025-11-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-sea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=572031 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2025/248

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().