Local Finance and Rural People’s Quality of Life

Abstract

This study aims to explore local finance and the quality of life of people sub-district municipalities and sub-district administrative organizations (SAOs) in the Lower Northeastern Provincial Cluster 2 of Thailand. The study uses the quantitative techniques and data from the Department of Local Administration collected in 2017-2019. This study evaluates the per capita local revenues and spending in three-year panel data including scrutinizes four local public services that involve with quality of life, namely education, infrastructure, and disaster prevention and emergency medical services(EMS). The study’s results indicate that revenue received from all sources increased annually for both types of local administrative organizations. The revenues collected by the LAOs was the lowest source of revenue, while grants from the central government was the highest revenue. The per-capita revenues from all sources of SAOs stayed lower than the revenues of sub-district municipalities. However, both local organizations reported higher expenditures on personnel. Each year, the overall expenditures climbed, except investment that went down. Furthermore, this study finds that people residing in areas under the jurisdiction of SAOs had a lower quality of life than those in sub-distract municipalities, including in terms of education, infrastructure, and disaster prevention and mitigation. Both administrative jurisdictions had insufficient emergency medical supports, with over 70 percent in need of ambulances. Finally, this study also finds that people living in areas under the jurisdiction of SAOs showed the least satisfaction with infrastructure and emergency medical services(EMS) respectively.