Income dynamics, schooling investment, and poverty reduction in Thai villages, 1987–2004

International organizations, donor aid agencies, and policymakers, as well as researchers, have all placed emphasis on taking concerted action to reduce poverty to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), most importantly, their first target of halving poverty by 2015. Some countries in East Asia, including Thailand, have successfully reduced poverty over the last few decades and are highly likely to comply with the goal of the global poverty target (Chen and Ravallion 2005).