Strategic Intelligence Scanning

About 0.1% of the Thai population are so rich that they own 46.5% of all of Thailand's total assets while nearly one in four Thai people, 23.5%, live in poverty. This is according to a 2012 study by the National Economics and Social Development Board (NESDB). In Thailand, the top 20% of people are considered wealthy and they possess 326 times more land than poor Thais and have salaries that are 25 times higher. This 'rich' group own almost 80% of private land in the country compared to just 0.3% ownership by people at the bottom 20% of wealth. Thais in the top 10% of the wealth index earned 39% of all earnable income in the country while people at the bottom 10% earned just 1.6%. All of this data is in light of the fact that the poverty level in Thailand actually fell in 2012 from 13.2% to 12.6% of the total population. There are still an estimated 15.6 million poor people living in Thailand with 8.4 million of those considered extremely poor. The reason the percent of poor people in the country fell slightly is being attributed to better education of poor children along with government measures to lower living costs and increase incomes. Additional economic data shows 99.9% of Thai people have less that 10 million baht in bank accounts. "The 10 provinces where the poor live, listed from the most poor to the less poor, are: Mae Hong Son, Pattani, Narathiwat, Kalasin, Si Sa Ket, Tak, Nakhon Phanom, Sakhon Nakhon, Buri Ram and Mukdahan."