The Effect of Expected Income on Wealth Accumulation and Retirement Contribution of Thai Wageworkers

Abstract

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.

The interrelationships of work-related factors, person-environment fit, and employee turnover intention

“…Wealth accumulation was the essential factor allowing a wageworker to contribute to retirement effectively in the long term (C. Ketkaew et al, 2019c). Insufficient wealth accumulation resulted from low financial attainment capacity (C. Ketkaew et al, 2020Ketkaew et al, , 2019b) may cause financial insecurity.…”

Towards Sustainable Retirement Planning of Wageworkers in Thailand: A Qualitative Approach in Behavioral Segmentation and Financial Pain Point Identification

“…Ideally, the number of clusters should be between ten and fifteen to ensure that clusters are sufficiently wide to sort a significant number of codes (Morse and Field 1995). Moreover, note that we decided to use the age of 35 as a cut-off for analyzing the segments because most Thai individuals start to save and accumulate long-term assets around the age of 30 to 35 (Ketkaew et al 2019c).…”

“…After a thorough review of the pilot test, the researchers configured the questions to guide each question into specific topics for the respondents to answer (see Appendix A). The questions were adapted from Ketkaew et al (2019c) and merged with concepts suggested by Cooper and Vlaskovits (2016). The framework used for the in-depth interview includes the customer zoom tool, the problem zoom tool, and the solution zoom tool (Cooper and Vlaskovits 2016).…”

“…Additionally, it would enable policymakers to accurately address retirement planning issues in Thailand, resulting in the nation's sustainable retirement planning. Recent research papers in the personal financial planning context conducted in Thailand mostly employed quantitative methods (e.g., structural equation modeling, regression analysis, and econometrics) (Ketkaew et al 2019a(Ketkaew et al , 2019b(Ketkaew et al , 2019cNaruetharadhol et al 2021). Moreover, those studies were conducted using various sample respondents (e.g., salary workers, self-employed workers, and college students) and secondary economic data.…”

An Investigation of the Relationship Among Medical Center’s Image, Service Quality, and Patient Loyalty

“…The data's descriptive statistics were first analyzed. Next, given the use of second-order constructs in this research model, an assessment of the proposed secondorder models for the PQ and the whole measurement model was adapted from the recent business research literature (Di-Clemente et al, 2019;Ketkaew et al, 2019Ketkaew et al, , 2020Nadeem et al, 2020). Explicitly, perceived service quality was assigned as a second-order construct, suggesting the two-step approach to assess the study's measurement model (first-order and second-order measurement models) and the full structural model.…”