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Call for Papers: PIER Research Workshop 2025
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Discussion Paperdp
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Year
2025
2024
2023
2022
...
16 October 2024
20241729036800000
No. 223

Willingness-To-Pay vs Administrative Hurdles: Understanding Barriers to Social Insurance Enrollment in Thailand

Abstract

Many government social insurance policies have low take-up. To understand whether this is due to administrative barriers, information, or low valuation of the insurance, we study an unusual policy experiment in Thailand that offered a very large lump-sum incentive for informal workers in selected provinces to enroll in a voluntary workers’ social insurance program. Using administrative data, we find that the temporary enrollment incentive increased coverage by 67 percentage points – from 6 percent of informal workers to 73 percent – within just a few months. However, 12 months later, only 13 percent of these new enrollees remained in the scheme, much lower than the retention rate of those who joined absent the incentive. By using new enrollees’ choices among insurance tiers to back out a revealed valuation of insurance, we find that those who were induced to enroll by the incentives value insurance less than those who enrolled without. Combined, the results suggest that low social insurance enrollment may be the result of low ex-ante valuations of the insurance, rather than administrative barriers.

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JEL: O17H31
Tags: informal workersvoluntary social insurancecash assistance
The views expressed in this workshop do not necessarily reflect the views of the Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research or the Bank of Thailand.
Benjamin A. Olken
Benjamin A. Olken
Rema Hanna
Rema Hanna
Phitawat Poonpolkul
Phitawat Poonpolkul
Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research
Nada Wasi
Nada Wasi
Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research

Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research

273 Samsen Rd, Phra Nakhon, Bangkok 10200

Phone: 0-2283-6066

Email: pier@bot.or.th

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