Household Vulnerability and Child Education Inequality: Evidence from Thailand’s Household Survey and the National Educational Test Score

Abstract

This paper is set for two modest objectives: first, to investigate household vulnerability based on the National Statistical Office’s household survey and to highlight selected vulnerability measures, and to investigate parental investment in child education which is part of household expenditure. The second source of information refers to National Educational Test Score commonly referred as O-NET test for 6th-grade students in 2019, which was compulsory then to evaluate variations in the national test score.  Descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, decile, and percentile distribution are adopted for comparison sake. Among our results: i) the households with child members were more likely to be vulnerable in almost all categories than households without child members; ii) parent investment in child education varied considerably between poor- and rich- income households; iii) variations of educational achievement (O-net score) confirm disparities in primary school qualities.  On top, schools under the Ministry of Higher Education (or the demonstration schools) and private schools outperformed other schools in the O-net-score—yet, these schools are geographically concentrated in Bangkok and vicinities or in big cities, not equally distributed. The last section discusses the Ministry of Education budget allocation that may be redesigned in accordance with the pro-poor formula instead of a “uniformity” basis to narrow gap in child education