LAUSR

Thailand is the world’s fourth most unequal country by wealth, but past research on this phenomenon has mainly been along individual or geographic lines as the census is insufficiently detailed to provide ethnic-based measures. This article introduces an innovative methodological solution to measure horizontal inequality in countries where the census excludes ethnicity. We investigate the roots of a structural ‘ethnic penalty’ by contextualising in some detail an ethnic gap in Thai public policies concerning poverty and inequality. Then, using data from the United Nations Development Programme’s ‘Human Achievement Index’ for Thailand, the Thai Office of the National Culture Commission’s Ethnolinguistic Maps of Thailand report, and Thai National Statistical Office population and poverty data, we compile the country’s first dataset on horizontal (between-group) inequality by ethnicity. Employing this novel approach, we then examine the eight sectors in the Human Achievement Index: health, education, employment, income, housing and living environment, transport and communication, family and community life, and participation. Describing how Thailand’s major ethnic groups fare in each sector and comparing inequality amongst sectors, this ethnolinguistics-based approach provides evidence of a significant ‘ethnic penalty’ in Thailand and makes initial recommendations for addressing the issue.