Thailand is using its strong lottery culture to encourage informal workers to save for retirement – but questions remain about whether the scheme will change behaviour or fuel more gambling.
Like many countries in South and East Asia, Thailand is seeking to improve retirement savings for informal and self-employed workers. Its retirement lottery scheme, which is linked to its National Savings Fund, seeks to address persistently low pension coverage among informal workers by drawing on Thailand’s strong lottery culture, but questions remain about whether it will increase savings or simply add to existing lottery spending.
While the policy has attracted international attention as an innovative behavioural nudge, its long-term success will depend on its effectiveness, equity and the ethical implications of using lottery-style incentives to promote financial security.
In Thailand, government officials and those employed in the formal sector are guaranteed a minimum pension upon their retirement. In contrast, informal workers only have access to a voluntary program. The National Savings Fund (NSF) was designed to solve this problem. The NSF provides informal workers with an individual savings account, supported by a matching contribution from the government, a guaranteed return on investment and tax benefits. The challenge is to achieve wider NSF coverage and to encourage existing members to save more regularly.
In 2025, around 20.9 million workers – 52.4 per cent of Thailand’s labour force — were engaged in informal employment. Since its introduction in 2011, the NSF has failed to gain widespread popularity, with only 13.7 per cent of informal workers joining the scheme by April 2026. Though financial literacy among Thais is improving, only around 14 per cent achieve their retirement savings goal.
After previous efforts to enhance coverage through increased government matching contributions and targeted social marketing had limited success, Thailand turned to more innovative approaches. In late 2024, the Thai government backed a retirement lottery linked to the NSF. The lottery was legally endorsed in November 2025, but implementation has been delayed by uncertainty about legislation governing its technical details.
The retirement lottery uses digital tickets and targets Thai savers over the age of 15. Individuals are limited to a maximum monthly spend of 3,000 baht (US$92) and the full amount an individual spends on tickets is saved to their individual pension fund, managed by the NSF. Purchasing a ticket also enters an individual into a prize draw. Prizes are drawn weekly with the first prize valued at 1,000,000 baht (US$31,000) and 10,000 awards valued at 1,000 baht (US$31) each.
Unlike the traditional six-digit Thai lottery, the retirement lottery benefits all participants – even those who lose – by translating their spending directly into savings. Individual lottery fund spending accumulates into their final pension at the age of 60. A monthly cap ensures the retirement lottery is a way of saving rather than a gamble.
The retirement lottery is garnering attention from international onlookers. In 2025, the World Bank praised it as an impressive innovation for increasing pension savings. The policy’s outcomes are being watched as a potential model for other low- and middle-income countries.
The retirement lottery taps into longstanding Thai habits and behaviours, presenting an opportunity for a new policy instrument to encourage voluntary pension savings. In 2019, a survey of Thai lottery spending found that one in four people had bought tickets and total expenditure on lotteries totalled 250 billion baht (US$7.7 billion) annually.
A 2021 study found that state lotteries provided around 3.4 trillion baht (US$104.6 billion) in sales for the Thai government between 2013 and 2022. A 2023 report also identified around 24 million lottery buyers across Thailand each year, with participation highest among those aged 50–59 (25 per cent), 40–49 (22 per cent), 30–39 (21 per cent) and 19–29 (18 per cent).
Despite its potential popularity, practical and ethical questions remain. Given Thailand’s appetite for lottery spending, it is unclear whether its population will switch to prize-linked savings products or buy them on top of existing lottery purchases. Further work will be important to understand the characteristics of savers and how different groups of informal workers will respond across gender, age, culture and geography.
Gambling is traditionally seen as a social harm. The strength of this policy is that it aims to transform this socially harmful behaviour into individual and public benefits. But it could have unintended consequences if it fuels gambling elsewhere. Its effectiveness compared to other policies – such as increasing financial literacy, increased government matching and targeted information provision – also remains to be seen.
Alongside issues of effectiveness are questions of ethics, including whether the policy end of greater savings justifies the chosen means of gambling and whether it matters that those buying tickets are not fully aware that prizes are simply a way to realise better savings behaviours.
Politics and administration will shape whether the policy proves to be effective, equitable and ethical in its attempt to improve pension coverage. For individual workers, participation will allow at least some to keep an ace up their sleeve for their retirement.
Republished from East Asia Forum
