Abstract
This chapter describes the causes of the major flooding in Thailand in 2011, and discusses the government' s quick response in drafting a flood management master plan and allocating USD 11,290 million for assistance and compensation for flood victims, restoration of damaged property, and implementation of the master plan. The weakness of the master plan is also pointed out.
After revising the World Bank's estimates of loss of agricultural output, the study develops the "difference-in-difference” method to estimate the impact of the flooding on household income and expenditure in 26 flooded provinces. It matches the addresses of flooded households taken from the 2011 Socio-economic Survey, which did not have questions regarding the impact of floods, with the flooded areas from satellite radar images. Quantile regressions are employed to quantify the differential impact of the flood on households with different income levels.
The results show that the flooding reduced total household expenditures by 5.7% to 14%. These findings are consistent with the reported negative national GDP growth of 8.9 % in the fourth quarter of 2011 when Thailand was flooded. One interesting finding is that the 2011 floods had a significantly negative impact on the income and expenditure of middle and high income households, but that its impact on poor households was not statistically significant. The study also finds that the 2011 floods had a negative impact on the money and wage incomes of some middle income households living in the flooded areas. All estimated coefficients in the business income regression are not statistically significant. Comparing farmers’ income in the 2011 Socio-economic Survey with that in 2009, the study also finds that the 2011 flooding had a large negative impact on the farm profits of some middle income households in the flooded provinces.
Finally, the study discusses some policy implications.
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Notes
- 1.
Since the flood-prone areas can grow only low yield floating rice, the land price is low. Other reasons why the estates are located in Ayuthaya, which is 76 kilometers from Bangkok, are policy distortions, i.e., the factories there were entitled to higher tax “holidays” and lower minimum wages than those in Bangkok. The policy distortions to promote industrial development in Ayutthaya were necessary because of the delay of the Eastern Seaboard Development and construction of new Suvarnabhumi airport in the east of Bangkok.
- 2.
At least there were ten major dyke breaches and damage to the flood control infrastructure in the Chao Phraya River basin between 14 September and 3 October 2011 (Royal Irrigation Department (RID). 2011).
- 3.
Rule curve is the optimum operation rules for reservoir systems with multiple purposes. The rules involve non-linear and complex mathematical relations among hydropower plant’s efficiency, flow rate, reservoir water level, and storage.
- 4.
Although the Socio-economic Survey allows us to identify the villages in which the households live, the researchers cannot identify the village boundary from the satellite images due to the lack of official digitalized data on village boundaries.
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Poaponsakorn, N., Meethom, P., Pantakua, K. (2015). The Impact of the 2011 Floods, and Flood Management on Thai Households. In: Aldrich, D., Oum, S., Sawada, Y. (eds) Resilience and Recovery in Asian Disasters. Risk, Governance and Society, vol 18. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55022-8_5
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