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Abstract
Poverty alleviation remains a challenge for Thailand’s socio-economic development.
A key strategy of the Thai government to help meet this challenge at the ‘grass roots’
level has been the promotion of Community-Based Enterprises (CBEs). And national
statistics and descriptive studies have shown that CBEs have led to both income
improvement and employment creation. However, poverty is a multi-dimensional
concept and also some groups are more adversely affected (such a women) than
others. By investigating poverty from a number of different angles, this research aims
to assess whether CBES are a genuine tool for poverty reduction at the individual
household level.
This paper provides an outline of the framework developed for assessing CBE
impact on poverty reduction at the micro level. This approach is a multi-disciplinary
approach drawing particularly on three main fields of knowledge: business
performance measurement, impact assessment of development projects, and
poverty measurement. The approach is divided into two main steps: (1) identification
of poverty groups and poverty components, and (2) impact assessment of CBEs and
other factors on household poverty. By using this approach, it is expected that not
only the impact of CBEs on household poverty can be measured, but also the role
and contribution of women in CBEs and possible related benefits can be assessed.
The focus of this research is on investigating the actual impact of CBEs on poverty
reduction in northern Thailand. At this stage, no empirical results will be provided, but
outcomes of the initial phase of the implementation are discussed. The empirical
application is based on a survey conducted using 14 CBEs, 343 households and 12
villages.