Thailand recently reached “aged” society status, signifying that over twenty percent of the population is over sixty. Considering that Thailand has a low literacy rate, a fractured pension system, and no regulations that could provide sufficient income to cover basic needs after retirement, there will be economic repercussions if the situation is not handled soon. The government and financial institutions have been encouraging Thai citizens to prepare retirement plans but lack understanding of the root causes of being unprepared for retirement. The objectives of this qualitative research were to explore the behavior, knowledge, and preparedness towards retirement in governmental and private wageworkers. Moreover, the study aims to identify the pain points of being unprepared for retirement and deliver the optimal solutions and sustainable retirement plans suitable for each segment. This article employed a sample of 46 wageworkers in Khon Kaen, Thailand with ages ranging from 20 to 59 years old. Qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews and qualitative content analysis were conducted with the respondents asking about their income, expenses, pains, and problems towards saving for retirement, their desired outcome after they retire, and how they would achieve it. The framework used for the in-depth qualitative interview was by utilizing the customer, problem, and solution zoom tool. The research contributions were to facilitate Thai citizens being ready for retirement stages and overcome post-retirement risks sustainably. The results revealed that the sample could be divided into four segments by their characteristics. Two low-income segments share the same traits and behaviors that can prove that financial literacy plays an essential role in retirement readiness. Lower-income wage workers do not have their money put in place to prepare for retirement. Additionally, this article discussed the study’s implications for wageworkers, employers, and the Thai government. This article recommended that Thai citizens should accumulate wealth in various ways, including investment in financial assets and earning additional income from a second job. Employers should provide suitable retirement contribution schemes. The government should launch a policy enabling above-60-year-old seniors to continue working.

Thailand has now become the aging society. However, the fact that the majority of Thai wageworkers do not effectively save for their retirement may result in several elderly living below the poverty threshold during retirement. The objectives of this research article were to find the factors determining Thai wageworkers’ retirement contribution. Founded on the theory of life-cycle hypothesis, this article employed a sample of 300 wageworkers in the Northeast of Thailand and performed a statistical analysis using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach using age as a moderator. The empirical results revealed that expected income, wealth accumulation, career status, and health status were the main constructs influencing an individual’s ability to contribute to his or her retirement. This article suggested that a wageworker should first contribute his or her income through wealth accumulation schemes such as investment in financial assets, for example, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and properties, investment in other business as a second job, and simply cash deposit. The results suggested that wealth accumulation was the most important mediator allowing a wageworker to contribute to retirement effectively in the long term. This article also proposed thoughtful research implications for wageworkers, employers, and the Thai government. This article recommended that the government and authorized bodies (e.g., the Bank of Thailand and the Stock Exchange of Thailand) should provide more investment alternatives and improve investment knowledge of the citizens. This would allow the citizens to have sufficient financial knowledge to invest in riskier financial instruments that potentially give better returns such as stocks.

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The study proposes a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) evaluating the relationship among composite leading indices (CLIs) to forecast the economic cycle (EC) instead of using only individual CLI. The model of quarterly data in Thailand during 2013-2018 includes five constructs representing economic sectors that have the potential to be CLIs of EC. Those are two short-term CLIs including Short-leading economic index (SLEI) and International transmission (Trade channel) (ITT). SLEI composes Narrow money, Business sentiment index (Next 3 months), and Export volume index while ITT constructs from CLI of the major export partners. The Financial cycle (FC) has the potential to be the medium-term CLI, which includes Housing price index, Household debt to GDP, and Household debt. While Monetary condition (MC) and International transmission (Monetary channel) (ITM) are the long-term CLI. MC consists of Policy interest rate and real effective exchange rate whereas ITM is represented by the global economy using CLI for OECD and non-member economies as a proxy. The evidence from the forecasting performance in the out-of-sample by PLS-SEM outperforms the alternative models for all short-term, middle-term, and long-term periods. Therefore, the study convinces to apply the PLS-SEM to forecast EC.