The concept of “vulnerability to poverty” has attracted the attention of development
economists during the last two decades as witnessed by the increasing number of studies
on the issue that emerge in the literature. The aim of this study was to investigate the
issues of exposure to shocks/risks, risk management strategies and vulnerability to
poverty using rural households in Pattani province. A sample of 600 households in five
districts of Pattani province was selected using the multi-stage sampling approach. A
comprehensive descriptive analysis was conducted using SPSS to examine the exposure
to shocks in general. The Logit model was used to analyse households’ exposure to
shocks as well as their impact on their livelihood. The Feasible Generalized Least
Square (FGLS) technique was then employed to measure the level of vulnerability to
poverty. Finally, the Tobit model was estimated to determine the influence of exposure
to shocks on vulnerability to poverty. This study showed that rural households in Pattani
province faced many types of shocks and they had employed various strategies in order
to handle such shocks. It revealed that exposure to shocks, regardless of the type of
shocks, had significant impacts on the various aspects of the livelihood of the
households. However, as for the level of vulnerability to poverty, only exposure to social
shock was found to be statistically significant. Nevertheless, the results showed that
vulnerability in the sampled population was quite high at more than 80 percent which
was much higher than the incidence of poverty in the sample which stood at less than 30
percent. These findings also pointed out how important it was for the Thai government
to improve its social security net which can be relied upon by the vulnerable to prevent
them from actually falling into the trap of poverty.