SPRI Global presented options for measuring and monitoring multidimensional and monetary child poverty in Thailand, as required by SGD 1.1 and 1.2, during the ‘Workshop on Multidimensional Child Poverty under the SDGs’ for Thailand in Bangkok from July 27-28, 2016. This allowed the main government and research actors participating in the workshop to deliberate on the desirable list of indicators and dimensions that would constitute a measure of multidimensional child poverty to measure and track progress on SDG 1.1 and 1.2. In follow-up discussions with some of these specialists, SPRI Global also held presentations on the availability of data sources for monitoring SDG 1.1 and 1.2 for children in Thailand.

The two major issues to be addressed when considering multidimensional poverty research are the definition of dimensions and indicators and the aggregate measure. As a background for the discussions and to document the various options, SPRI Global explored the available Thai databases (The Socio-economic survey (SES); Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS); and The Child and Youth Survey (CYS) ) in order to find indicators, dimensions and thresholds that would adequately reflect the poverty situation of children in the country. SPRI Global researchers applied a first application of Multidimensional Child Poverty analyses using MODA- and MPI– types of methodologies.

The results of these preliminary analyses on older data were used as empirical illustrations during the workshops and are used to highlight options available to Thai authorities in making decisions on how to measure and monitor monetary and multidimensional child poverty to in accordance with SDG targets 1.1 and 1.2.