Assessing Inequalities in Thai Education

Abstract

Using data from Thailand’s Household Socioeconomic Survey, this paper measures the inequalities of Thai education distribution in 2011. We utilize the Gini coefficients to estimate Thai educational inequalities from cumulative years of educational attainment which are between zero (no schooling) to 21 (doctoral level) years. The education Gini coefficient of the whole country is 0.349. At the provincial level, the Gini coefficients are in a range between 0.272 (Nonthaburi) and 0.521 (Mae hong son). The provinces located near the Bangkok metropolis have greater equality in education, except for Samut Sakhon, while the provinces in the northern part of Thailand have severe inequality in education, especially the border provinces. As for the effect of schooling on educational inequality, we found that at the regional level, average years of schooling was significantly and negatively associated with the educational inequality, except in the northern part of Thailand. The magnitudes of coefficients of average years of schooling in the northern and southern parts are twice that of the central part of Thailand. The policy implication of this paper is that the Thai government should pay attention to two points in adjusting the scope of distribution: reduce the number of people without schooling and extend the educational attainment of people with primary education to secondary education. At the regional level, the policy of education expansion for reducing educational inequality is workable only in central Thailand, the north, and the south. Governments should utilize different policies in each region. In addition, the Thai government should pay more attention to solving the social problems which contribute to the issue of educational inequality.