Since 1997, there has been the economic regression especially on the implementation
of the floating market exchange rate on July 2, 1997 BE. The effect on Thai economic
has been so severe that a lot of enterprises collapsed resulting in difficulties among the
unemployed. The poverty in 1996 increased from 11.4% to 15.9% or the number of poor
people increased from 6.8 million in 1996 to 9.9 million in 1990. The number of
unemployed rose by almost 1 million people. Moreover, the income distribution has
been worse with wider income gap (Chachiwat Sikaew, 2002, p.23).