Blog Article
Tin Maw Maw Tun (Nora)
Background
Rural households often face multiple difficulties at once. A drought can reduce farm income while food and agricultural input prices are rising. A family may recover from one difficult season only to face another shock before its savings have been rebuilt. Evidence from Thailand and Vietnam shows that weather shocks can have real consequences for household welfare. Using panel data from Northeast Thailand and Central Vietnam, Nguyen et al. (2020) found that floods, droughts and storms had significant effects on household income, consumption and poverty, although the severity differed between the two countries. Drought was a common extreme weather event in both settings and had significant negative effects on household welfare.
More recent evidence from Vietnam shows how environmental pressures can affect rural livelihoods. An International Labour Organization (ILO) study of water scarcity and income insecurity in the Mekong Basin highlights the effects of changing rainfall, prolonged drought, and salinity intrusion on livelihoods. It also points to continuing gaps in social protection, particularly among agricultural and informal workers who are highly exposed to climate risks (International Labour Organization, 2026).
Thailand faces a different situation, but household budgets are also under pressure. A UNICEF NIDA survey conducted in June 2026 among 1,227 households with children found that 61% reported being greatly or very severely affected by rising living costs. More than four in five households with children reported that rising costs had affected the quality or quantity of food their children eat (UNICEF Thailand, 2026).
When Coping Creates Longer-Term Costs
Households respond to difficult periods in different ways. They may use savings, borrow money, sell assets, look for additional work, or reduce household spending. These choices can help families deal with an immediate shortage of income, but some responses may also leave households with fewer resources afterward. Coping and resilience are therefore not necessarily the same thing. A household may find a way to manage an immediate crisis without necessarily becoming less vulnerable to the next one. Previous research also suggests that the same household strategy may not work equally well everywhere. Using five waves of rural household data from Thailand and Vietnam, Nguyen et al. (2023) found different roles for livelihood diversification across the two countries.
Land diversification helped improve per-capita consumption when
households faced shocks affecting the wider community in Thailand, while labour
diversification played this role in Vietnam. Simply encouraging households to diversify
may not be enough. The type of diversification and the livelihood opportunities
available locally can influence whether it actually helps households manage a shock.
Household Capacity and Resilience
Households enter a crisis from different starting points. Some have savings or insurance.
Some depend mainly on one livelihood, while others have several sources of income.
Household members also differ in education, skills, and their ability to participate in
the labour market. These issues motivate my current fellowship research on rural
households in Thailand and Vietnam. Rather than assuming that a particular resource
automatically makes a household resilient, the study examines whether capacities
available before shocks are related to how households cope as their shock burden
increases. Particular attention is given to responses such as costly borrowing and asset
sales, which may solve an immediate problem but create longer-term costs.
The Thailand Vietnam Socio-Economic Panel (TVSEP) provides a useful basis for
examining these questions over time. The dataset covers approximately 2,200 rural
households in 220 villages in Thailand and Vietnam. Ten survey waves were collected
between 2007 and 2024. The data include information on household coping behaviour
and different types of shocks, including droughts, floods, price fluctuations and health
shocks (Grote et al., 2026).
Social Protection and Household Resilience
The ILO’s assessment of Vietnam shows that the country has developed an extensive
social protection system, including social insurance, social assistance and social health
insurance. However, coverage gaps remain, particularly among agricultural and
informal workers who are also highly exposed to climate risks (International Labour
Organization, 2026). Thailand’s recent experience raises another question about the
reach of household support. In UNICEF’s 2026 survey, families in the North reported
some of the greatest pressures from rising living costs, yet only 17% of households
surveyed there reported receiving assistance (UNICEF Thailand, 2026).
Way Forward
First, social protection needs to take account of the kinds of shocks rural households
actually face. In climate-sensitive areas, this means connecting social protection more
closely with disaster risk management and climate adaptation rather than treating these
as completely separate policy areas. The International Labour Organization (2026)
identifies adaptive social protection as one way to make these links stronger in Vietnam.
Second, household vulnerability should be understood more broadly than current
income alone. Information on livelihood dependence, exposure to different shocks, and
access to financial or institutional support can help build a clearer picture of which
households may have fewer options when difficulties arise.
Third, livelihood policies need to reflect local conditions. Nguyen et al. (2023) suggest
improving access to credit, farm mechanization, and road quality in Thailand, while
promoting local rural non-farm sectors in Vietnam. Finally, recommendations from my
own research should follow the empirical results. It would be too early to say that
savings, insurance, education, or a particular livelihood strategy prevent erosive coping
before these relationships have been tested.
If some pre-shock capacities reduce
potentially damaging coping, the next question is whether those capacities can be
strengthened or whether additional public support is needed. Rural households cannot
be expected to absorb every shock on their own. The policy challenge is to understand
which resources help households manage difficult periods without weakening their
ability to deal with what comes next.
References
Grote, U., Nguyen, T. T., & Do, M. H. (2026). TVSEP: A comprehensive long-term
panel dataset on shocks, welfare and agriculture in rural Thailand and Vietnam.
Data in Brief, 112993.
International Labour Organization. (2026). Harnessing social protection: Enabling
climate-resilient livelihoods in Viet Nam – Water scarcity and income insecurity
in the Mekong Basin. https://www.ilo.org/publications/harnessing-social
protection-enabling-climate-resilient-livelihoods-viet
Nguyen, D. L., Nguyen, T. T., & Grote, U. (2023). Shocks, household consumption,
and livelihood diversification: a comparative evidence from panel data in rural
Thailand and Vietnam. Economic Change and Restructuring, 56(5), 3223-3255.
Nguyen, T. T., Nguyen, T.-T., Le, V.-H., Managi, S., & Grote, U. (2020). Reported
weather shocks and rural household welfare: Evidence from panel data in
Northeast Thailand and Central Vietnam. Weather and climate Extremes, 30,
100286.
UNICEF Thailand. (2026). Rising living costs push families and youth to cut back on
food and education, UNICEF surveys find. Retrieved 19 September 2026 from
https://www.unicef.org/thailand/press-releases/rising-living-costs-push
families-and-youth-cut-back-food-and-education-unicef
About the Contributor
Tin Maw Maw Tun is a PhD candidate in Economics at Chiang Mai University,
Thailand. She is a fellow of the Data Analytics for Policy Research Fellowship (DAPRF) – Cohort 5. Her research spans development, environmental, energy, institutional, labour, and agricultural economics, with particular interests in climate change, migration, inequality, sustainable development, and public policy. Focusing on developing- country contexts, she uses quantitative and econometric methods to examine complex development challenges and produce evidence with relevance for policy and vulnerable communities.
Disclaimer
All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the
organization.
