Abstract:
To study the importance of village fund and the household economy of its member. The objectives of the research are studying the members' loans getting from other sources, purposes of the loans, income & expense, debts and savings by means of comparing before and after being member. And the research also studies impact of the village fund policy to rural development in Thailand. This descriptive research collects quantitative data from 578 samples. The sampling steps are random selecting one province in each region, random selecting one district in each province, random selecting one sub-district in each district, and random selecting villagers who are the fund members in each sub-district. The sub-district for sampling in the north region is Maesook in Jaehome district (Lampang province) - in the north-east region is Huaipho in Muang district (Kalasin province) - in the central region is Banpuk in Muang district (Chonburi province) - in the south region is Nakayard in Kuankanoon district (Phatthalung province). Interviewing form for collecting data is composed of 4 parts, i.e. general data of the samples, membership of the fund, household economy data and their opinions about advantages of the fund. All data are analyzed quantitatively. The research finds that 31.4% of the fund members also borrow money from other sources. Most members (63.8%) borrow money for investing in a business and providing working tools. Their income is derived from ordinary jobs (56.7 percentage) and from jobs invested with loan from the fund (46.6%).Their expense is mostly on consumption (88.3%). In conclusion, the research finds that 48.6% of members have less income than expense. After becoming a member of the fund, 84% of them pay the same interest while 11.2% pay less and 46.4% of the member get increasing loan burden while 30.2% get reducing. Their expenditure increases 49.8% and savings increases 26.2%. Briefly, 59.1% of the members assume that their living becomes a little better and 72.9% of the members accept that the fund is useful to the village. The issues of studying (income, expenditure, debts and savings) make the samples worry about taxes, therefore some of their answers may not be true. Suggestions for the further research are studying in the scope of all areas throughout the country, collecting data from household accounts and using more time to study. Suggestions for the policy level are formulating procedure of following up and checking the loans utilization with their objectives. Besides, the Government has to campaign and inform the fund members and other people about sufficiency economy way of life because the research finds that although the members get more income and more savings, they also tend to spend and get into debts increasingly. The ratios of increasing income and savings are less than the ratios of increasing expenditure and debts. Especially, expense for consumption is bigger than expense for production. The village fund without controlling the loans utilization according to their objectives may promote consumption, spending money extravagantly and getting into debts. Endeavor to decrease the poverty problem will continue to be unfulfilled.