Even though international travel restrictions are being used to keep the COVID-19 pandemic under control, these measures cannot be considered as long-term solutions to the ongoing crisis. Limitations on traveling activities have tremendous adverse consequences on a country’s economy, particularly leading in radically expanding economic downturn and a shrinking tourism industry. To overcome this hardship, several countries have eased COVID-19 travel restrictions. However, there are still questions concerning the benefit to society as the impact assessment of this implementation transmitting to an economy has not been explicitly investigated. In response to this, we aim to assess the impacts of this implementation as to provide a guideline to global countries for their future adoption. By calculating the output and household income multipliers from the tourism input–output table, this study utilizes a case study from Thailand to indicate that prolonging the full mobility restrictions of international tourists, which results in a yearly loss of revenue in Thai tourism industry, would cost country production up to 144.97 billion USD and up to 45.4 billion USD for loss of household income. When international travel limitations were relaxed, production and household damage would fall to 142.24 billion USD (+1.88%) and 44.7 billion USD (+1.54%), respectively. At individual sectors level, our calculation identified that the most damage of production activities would exist in public utility, agriculture, and food manufacturing sectors. In the perspective of household income, those in the agricultural sector would have greatest impact. This impact results from the Thai tourism industry positioned as a buyer in an economy, having most impact on sectors selling their products or inputs to the tourism industry. As suggested by the input–output multipliers, we emphasize that strengthening the resilience of tourism-related sectors and reforming the tourism industry in relation to potential consumption and production patterns are critical for sustainable tourism development.

Productivity has posed issues for global countries in terms of promoting older employment due to an emergence of questions regarding production efficiency. Individual characteristics result in varying production efficiencies, which in turn provide different levels of productivity. Taking this concern into account, we are here to examine the characteristics of older workers who provide high productivity in order to seek recommendations for fostering decent work for them. We utilized the dataset collected from the pilot service companies in Thailand who participated in a national initiative program for employing older people. A total of 204 older workers and their characters were then observed. Those characters were analyzed by the Generalized Ordered Logit Regression (gologit) model. Empirical findings indicate that allocating work that is related to communication and coordination to older workers would enhance odd ratio of their productivity by as much as 4.79 times compared to general tasks. Furthermore, employing older individuals on a part-time basis tends to generate higher-level productivity than full-time employment. We also found that gender and age differences have no significant effect on productivity in the service sector as people age, and factors related to types of employment, education, health, and financial status are also a precise determinant for the productivity of older workers. This would suggest that the work design for the older workers must be in line with the aforementioned determinants. In addition, the government initiatives utilizing key findings from this study to boost older workers’ productivity should give priority on tax incentives, promoting and advocating for employment equality, and vocationalization programs.

As the prevalence of social inequalities has become increasingly evident, the implementation of social welfare policies in countries across the globe has faced considerable obstacles and has not yielded the desired results. In spite of the fact that social welfare policies are formulated to reduce inequalities in society, the recent increase in inequalities has raised questions about whether or not welfare implementation is appropriate to the social context where resource distributions are dominated by economic structure. Inspired by this, the aim of this paper is to echo contemporary perspectives on social inequality and challenges that have contributed to its development under the economic system of market competition. The contemporary matters arising from social inequalities, which include intergenerational inequality, gender-based inequality, health inequality, and education inequality, are examined in accordance with the context of market competition. This would hopefully enable academicians to timely recognize and address ideological and paradoxical social inequalities and welfare development within their society.

There is an increasing number of older adults being encouraged to come back to the workforce in search of better financial security in their later years. At the same time, the job market nowadays has increasingly depended on technology to recruit new workers, especially in Smart Cities, a concept that has been recently introduced to developing countries. As a result, the use of the Internet for job searches has become increasingly important for older adults living in urban environments, especially those with limited resources. However, there has not been an in-depth paper exploring the various factors that may affect the older population’s ability to use this new development to their advantage. This study offered a closer look at the social and economic factors that influence acceptance of using the Internet to look for a job among older urban poor in Thailand. By understanding the influences that shape their attitudes and behaviors towards online job searches, it is then possible to guide the development of Smart Cities and offer better assistance to older adults who wish to use the Internet for employment opportunities. We applied a logit regression model on data collected from individuals aged pre-retirement and retirement (n = 1505) in two Thai cities with significantly different economic development levels. The results showed that gender, religion, family arrangement, and income had a significant impact on older adults’ online job search activities, especially when it came to women, people of the Islamic faith, people living with partners, and high-income individuals. Urban planners are recommended to take these aforementioned factors into account while formulating the Smart Cities development plan.

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