Vulnerability and Risk Management for Sustainable Livelihoods of Farm Households in Northern Thailand-

摘要

This research attempts to explain the relationship between poverty, livelihood difficulties, risk and risk management and vulnerability to poverty of farm households in Northern Thailand. Furthermore, this study proposes a health insurance concept addressing risks and poverty of farm households.In line with the objective was to analyse risk and risk management strategies of vulnerable rural households in Northern Thailand. Firstly, the result of a principal component analysis (PCA) was utilized to determine the important factors affecting household poverty. Furthermore, a poverty index was developed. The PCA retained 16 out of 65 possible poverty determining variables. Six of the 16 variables relate to the human resource factor: (1) percentage of adults who can write, (2) percentage of adults who completed primary school, (3) percentage of adults with non-farm occupation, (4) number of children, (5) percentage of unemployed to employed, and (6) family size. There are two variables that relate to food security and which were significant: (7) crop yield and (8) value of main crop yield. Four variables relating to the dwelling show a high correlation to poverty. These are the (9) housing condition, (10) quality of latrine, (11) water system, and (12) furniture. Four variables related to assets: (13) value of transportation assets, (14) farmland owned, (15) value of assets per adult equivalent, and (16) value of agricultural assets. The explicit factors relevant for assessing poverty are the dwelling conditions, assets, human resources, and food security, respectively. The factor which can lead the poor to become even poorer is the human resource factor, where e.g. the number of dependents is comprised. Secondly, results of the PRA showed that the most pressing problem plaguing households is their debt. Households try to honor their debt repayment obligations, but it appears that the frequent occurrence of income shocks and their low risk management capacities prevent them from doing so. Land issues relate to the second most important problem area. Often, farm households lack sufficient land and have land certificate problems. Another pressing problem negatively influencing households? livelihoods are droughts, which lead to water shortages, higher fertilizer prices and middleman problems. The results of the PRA provided an overview of all livelihood problems; they concentrated on livelihood shocks related to idiosyncratic and covariate risks. One idiosyncratic risk of main importance is poor health.Thirdly, results of the risk and risk management analysis found that there are five major types of risks frequently encountered in rural areas: 1) Natural risks (fire, heavy rainfall, heavy wind, damage to house, and drought); 2) Theft risks (theft of livestock, crop and consumer goods); 3) Production risks (crop loss from weather, crop loss from insects, storage loss, low production prices, low production, higher factor price, death of chickens); 4) Life-cycle risks/human risks (birth of children, funeral costs, unemployment, sudden moving away of working family member, old age, death of working member, son is placed in jail, risks of being cheated); 5) Health risks (prolonged sickness, chronic disease, working disability, alcohol problems of head of household and other family member). Fourthly, respondents reported that the burden of health expenses became lower after they had signed up for health insurance. However, 42% of the respondents stated that the health expenses still represented a relatively high burden to their household budget. The respondents were asked about their first choice of treatment when falling ill. The first choice for medical treatment service that households selected was the local health unit because of its proximity to the villagers. The next choice was the state hospital because there were more complete medical instruments than the local health unit; households went there when they became severely ill. The third choice was purchasing medicine from the pharmacy because the price of medicine was cheaper in comparison to traveling to consult a doctor at state hospital.Fifthly, conjoint analysis on health insurance aims to provide concepts for new, alternative health insurance products to support the exiting health insurance system in Thailand, and to help the government reduce health support costs. The analysis will be particularly useful when compared to the governmental health policy that already provides 30 Baht Health Insurance Cards to the rural poor. The households were asked which types of social security services they presently have. The 30 Baht Health Insurance is the most popular, with 88% of households participating in it. Others social security services in the region are the old age health insurance card and others account for the remainder. However, the public hospital was selected most when a household member was severely sick, with 77% respondents. Some gave the reason that the hospital provides full medical treatment and is ready in the case of an emergency operation. Finally, the study examines the linkage between poverty and vulnerability to poverty by the classification of a vulnerable group of farm households, and proposes an empirical measure that allows the setting of a vulnerability to poverty by applying Thailand?s poverty line as a benchmark.The results demonstrated that while 42% of the populations in the study area were poor in 2003, the majority of these are chronically poor (11% of the population). The information further shows that almost one-third of the population is transitorily poor i.e., 30.5% of the total population. This is dominated by a low expected mean consumption (LM vulnerability- the low expected mean consumption) accounting for 31% of total vulnerability (or 13.5% of the total population) and almost one-third was accounted for by high volatility of consumption (or 30% of the total population).