Economic Growth, Social Inequality, and Environmental Change in Thailand and Cambodia

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Social inequality and income growth that varies considerably across households are larger in developing economies than conventional economic factors can explain. The researchers undertaking this interdisciplinary research project hypothesize that environmental, social, cultural, and historical variations interact with economic factors and affect households, villages, and regions differentially, thereby explaining inequality and a large amount of the residual variance in income growth. The investigators will examine these factors and construct models of the rural, peri-urban, and national economies in Thailand and Cambodia, particularly in the Lower Mekong River Basin. They will deploy the methods and insights of the spatial social sciences, especially spatial statistics, analysis of remotely sensed images, development of geographic information systems (GIS), and the testing and refinement of formal economic models based on new and existing empirical data sets. The work products of the study will be: (1) extensive empirical data sets and conceptual models that relate both physical (e.g., deforestation, water quality, land-use change) and social (e.g., migration patterns, income inequality, and cultural practices) variables to economic growth; and (2) tests of predictions made by formal models. The results of the research will have broad implications for understanding the whole Earth system, especially the ecological and socioeconomic bases of land-use, land-conversion, and resource sustainability in environments that are experiencing increasing economic activity, the emergence or intensification of social inequality, periodic social crises, and consequent environmental degradation.The research team represents an unusual combination of social, physical, and computer scientists, and the research will involve anthropology, economics, geography, land-use imagery, climatology, and computer science disciplines as a coherent whole. The project will contribute to the development of research and education capacity in Cambodia and Thailand as well as among advanced Ph.D. students in several disciplines in the United States. Women and ethnic minorities in the U.S. and abroad will play key roles as research associates, scientific technicians, survey team leaders and staff, and data-entry technicians among other roles. The investigators will focus quite explicitly on training, education, and human capital development in rural areas. The project will contribute to the development of economic, social, and environmental policy, and the data sets and models that we produce will be useful for planning and managing the kinds of land-cover conversion that may occur in the future. The U.S. investigators will collaborate intensively with several Thai Universities and with government agencies and ministries and non-governmental organizations in Thailand (such as the Bank of Thailand and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives), and in Cambodia (such as the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Planning, and the Center for Khmer Studies.) This award is made as part of the FY 2004 Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) portfolio, following a competition that involved participation from all NSF Directorates and Offices. HSD awards are administered through specific programs that may change over the duration of the award. Management of all HSD awards is coordinated on an NSF-wide basis.