Glitz and Desperation in a Bangkok Divided by Income
Comparing the Divide: Upward mobility becomes harder to achieve as inequality grows, and it has become a nearly impossible task for those at the bottom both in Thailand and Bridgeport, Connecticut. - two places that are more than 8,000 miles apart but very close in their Gini coefficient: 0.539 (Bridgeport) and 0.536 (Thailand).
BANGKOK, Thailand — Most male drop-outs living in Bangkok’s most notorious slum, Klong Toei, are presented with two principal career paths: speed dealer or stevedore.
The first involves ducking cops, consorting with junkies and hardening your neighborhood’s rep as a crime-infested no-go zone. Klong Toei’s reputation for selling “ya ba” — pink meth tabs that smell like cotton candy when smoked — is second only to its reputation for catching on fire. Flames easily leap between dwellings in the slum, a labyrinth of buildings packed so tight that alleys remain dim under the Thai noontime sun.
Scenes of Klong Toei, one of Bangkok’s poorest slums. Below: Scenes in the Central World Mall in downtown Bangkok, Thailand. (Ed Kashi/VII/GlobalPost)In lieu of meth, Boat Thammongkul, 20, has chosen to work the nearby docks.
“We move heavy stuff at the pier for 500 baht a day,” Boat said. That’s roughly $16 for nine hours at the Klong Toei wharf, a critical hub in Thailand’s export economy and the chief employer of nearby slum dwellers.
“I knew I was poor. I just sucked it up and got used to it.”
~Jiraporn Suthaithum
“Just because people around me sell drugs doesn’t mean we have to,” he said. “Besides, I have a dream. One day, I want to work at a job indoors. With air-conditioning.”
Most Americans will find it easy to write off Thailand’s rich-poor class divide as predictable in a distant, developing country known for cheap holidays and military coups.
But perhaps they shouldn’t. When it comes to income inequality, Thailand and the US bear a startling statistical resemblance.
According to US government figures, America’s wealthiest 20 percent control a bit more than half of the national income. The same is true in Thailand, according to the World Bank.
Rich Americans’ counterparts at the bottom, the poorest 20 percent, take in 3 percent of the national income. In Thailand, the corresponding figure is nearly the same: 4 percent. The world’s premier measure of income disparity, the Gini coefficient, suggests that Thailand’s nationwide wealth disparity is equivalent to that of Bridgeport, Connecticut, or Washington, DC.
More: Glitz and Desperation in a Bangkok Divided by Income
The methodology for our economic analysis is based on what is known as the Gini coefficient, or the Gini Index, the most commonly used metric to gauge a society’s income inequality. On the Gini Index, zero equals perfect equality and one represents absolute inequality in which one person owns everything.
And using this Gini Index, America as a whole has a degree of income inequality that is higher than almost any other developed country, according to the most recent data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. According to the study, only Chile, Mexico and Turkey rank higher in inequality among the 34 members of the OECD.
More from GlobalPost: Special Report - The Great Divide