Appendix H. Examples of Household Budgets in Palokhi

^* Rice incomes are given in Baht; the figures in brackets show the actual amounts of rice in litres.

^* Rice incomes are given in Baht; the figures in brackets show the actual amounts of rice in litres.

^** Incomes received in the form of opium are given in terms of their cash value, that is in Baht. The actual amounts of opium received are given in brackets in tua, a Northern Thai unit of measurement approximately equivalent to 4.8 grammes.

^* Rice incomes are given in Baht; the figures in brackets show the actual amounts of rice in litres.

^** Incomes received in the form of opium are given in terms of their cash value, that is in Baht. The actual amounts of opium received are given in brackets in tua, a Northern Thai unit of measurement approximately equivalent to 4.8 grammes.

^* In 1981, wage work was mainly done by a young girl (an only daughter) to earn some money and rice to support her sick mother. Her work consisted primarily of milling rice for some of the wealthier households in Palokhi (for example, H1a, H1b, H2, and H3) as well as child-minding. The work that she did was hardly essential to these households as they could quite easily do it themselves. Her employment, therefore, was motivated by a charitable concern for her and her mother’s welfare. When her mother died in April, she was fostered out to a Northern Thai family in Ban Mae Lao, as I have noted before (Chapter III, n. 23, p. 197). She was paid rice wages in the form of milled non-glutinous rice grown by these households. As the Palokhi Karen do not generally sell the rice which they cultivate, it is difficult to impute a cash value to the rice and for this reason I have not indicated the cash values of these wages in the table. Where I have indicated the cash value of rice wages, the rice which was used for payment was glutinous rice purchased in Northern Thai settlements.

^** In this table, the expenditures on opium are given in Baht while the quantities of opium are given in tua in brackets. The purchases shown in the table are small and were bought essentially for medicinal purposes. They do not represent purchases by addicts (whose households are not reflected in the table) which were substantial but proved difficult to determine or estimate.

^*** Rice is sometimes used to “purchase” other items in Palokhi. Such transactions are therefore exhange transactions in reality. In the table, the rice used in this way is indicated in litres and, where the rice is glutinous rice originally purchased in Northern Thai settlements, their cash values are also indicated in brackets.

^**** The data for H13b in this table are not as reliable as those for other households and this explains to some extent why its expenditures appear somewhat small in comparison. It should be noted, however, that H13b shared a number of economic functions with H13a (as discussed in Chapter IV, pp. 206–11) and several items (for example, tobacco) were obtained from the parental household without having to buy them from other households. As I have also pointed out, H13a and H13b were relatively poor and this also explains the lower levels of expenditures of the household in this table.

^* The amounts of rice purchased are given in litres; the figures in brackets show the cash values (in Bht) of the corresponding amounts of rice.

^** The opium purchased is given in terms of their cash values, that is Bht; the corresponding amounts purchased are given in tua (in brackets), a Northern Thai unit of measurement approximately equivalent to 4.8 grammes.

^*** The rice shown in this column is rice used as a medium of exchange. I have not indicated the cash value of the rice as it was rice grown in Palokhi by H1b and therefore difficult to impute a value to it.