BANGKOK, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's poverty reduction has slowed since 2015, reflecting a weakening economy, stagnant incomes and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a World Bank report said Friday.
According to the report, Thailand made significant progress in poverty reduction with the number of the poor dropping to 6.8 percent in 2020 from 58 percent in 1990, thanks to the country's high growth rates and structural changes.
However, 79 percent of Thai poor people lived in rural, agricultural households, with the rural poor outnumbering the urban poor by nearly 2.3 million.
The report showed that rural Thais faced more than 3 percentage points higher poverty rates than those who lived in urban areas.
It also found that the poverty rates were unevenly distributed across the country, with the South and Northeast having rates that were almost twice as high as the average.
Thailand has the greatest income inequality rate in East Asia and the Pacific, with an income Gini index of 43.3 percent in 2019, the research found. Rural households earned 68 percent of urban households' monthly income.
"Policy measures that increase agricultural productivity, support diversification to higher value crops, and improve access to markets through better connectivity and digital technology can help overcome the constraints faced by the rural poor," said Fabrizio Zarcone, World Bank's country manager for Thailand. ■