Poverty, inequality and ethnic minorities in Viet Nam

The issue of poverty in Viet Nam cannot be addressed without comparing poverty levels among ethnic groups. Policymakers need to understand how ethnic minorities are disadvantaged. Government policies must seek not only to improve ethnic minority access to such endowments as land and education but also to address the disparities in the returns to these endowments among these groups.

A study from the University of Manchester, in the UK, examines how and why ethnic minorities are poorer than ethnic majorities in Viet Nam. The authors show why disparities in well-being and in poverty rates persist between these two groups, even though Viet Nam achieved the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of halving income poverty in 1998.

Vietnam is a multi-ethnic country with 54 ethnic groups, each with its own language, lifestyle and cultural heritage. The most dominant groups are the ‘Viet’ or ‘Kinh’ (86 percent of the population) and the ‘Hoa’ or Chinese, who mainly inhabit the inland deltas and coastal areas. They generally have more political and economic power than minority groups, which tend to be concentrated in upland mountain areas.

Between 1993 and 2002, the proportion of ethnic minorities among poor people rose from 20 percent to 30 percent. The causes are far from obvious. Are ethnic minorities poorer simply because they are located in remote areas, or because they do not have enough human or physical capital, such as education or land? Or does exclusion from processes of national development play a more important part? Key findings from an analysis of the Viet Nam Living Standards Measurement Surveys (VNLSS) include: 

• A majority of ethnic minority people live in remote rural areas, and therefore have less access to markets or medical care than ethnic majority groups.
• More ethnic minority people were living in poverty (62.1 percent) than majority groups (20.2 percent) in 2004, although the poverty rate varies considerably among minorities.
• Ethnic minorities are more vulnerable to falling into poverty (for example, due to adverse weather or illness) than majorities are, even accounting for differences in poverty.
• Ethnic minorities tend to have generally similar household characteristics, but have larger households, less education, and larger areas of land than ethnic majorities do.
• Larger households, low educational attainments and remote locations are strongly associated with low spending and increased poverty.

But ethnic minorities are not poorer only because of disadvantaged household characteristics, as their larger land holdings show. ‘Structural’ characteristics, whereby ethnic minorities get less out of their assets, are chiefly responsible for their continued poverty. The authors suggest that government policies should:

• not just concentrate on increasing household incomes, but also provide better education and infrastructure in remote areas to improve minority access to markets and livelihoods
• provide more intensive support for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged ethnic groups, for example through social safety nets or insurance.

Source(s):
‘Poverty, Inequality and Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam’, BWPI Working Paper 10, BWPI: Manchester, by Katsushi Imai and Raghav Gaiha, 2007 (PDF) Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 18 August 2008

Further Information:
Katsushi Imai
Department of Economics
School of Social Sciences
University of Manchester
Arthur Lewis Building
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Tel: +44 161 275 4827
Contact the contributor: katsushi.imai@manchester.ac.uk

Department of Economics, University of Manchester, UK

Raghav Gaiha
University of Delhi - Department of Economics
Delhi-110007,
India

Contact the contributor: rdg@bol.net.in

Department of Economics, University of Delhi, India

Brooks World Poverty Institute
University of Manchester
Humanities Bridgeford Street Building
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Tel: +44 161 306 6000
Contact the contributor: bwpi@manchester.ac.uk

Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester, UK

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'How tourism contributes to poverty reduction in China'