Economic survival duration of Thai workers during COVID-19

Abstract

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihood and economic survival of Thai citizen workers, using The Asia Foundation’s survey data which were conducted in May 2020 (first round), August 2020 (second round) and November 2020 (third round). We adopt the Cox proportional-hazards regression with lasso estimation to estimate the coefficients and perform variable selection simultaneously. The model allows us to identify the vulnerable groups with risks of consumption inadequacy. The empirical results show that those workers characterized as low-educated, unemployed, unskilled, working in the tourism sector and living in the northeastern or southern regions are less likely to sustain their consumption. However, our study highlights that higher education is a crucial factor influencing the survivability of Thai workers. Regarding the role of government schemes, the result shows that that a set of cash assistance programs is less likely to increase the survivability of the non-agricultural workers.