Ethnicity and risk sharing network formation: Evidence from rural Viet Nam

Quynh Hoang, Camille Saint Macary and Laure Pasquier-Doumer
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Quynh Hoang: DIAL - Développement, institutions et analyses de long terme, IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement
Camille Saint Macary: DIAL - Développement, institutions et analyses de long terme, LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement
Laure Pasquier-Doumer: DIAL - Développement, institutions et analyses de long terme, LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement

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Abstract: Ethnic inequality remains a persistent challenge for Viet Nam. This paper aims at better understanding this ethnic gap through exploring the formation of risk sharing networks in rural areas. It first investigates the differences in risk sharing networks between the ethnic minorities and the Kinh majority, in terms of size and similarity attributes of the networks. Second, it relies on the concept of ethnic homophily in link formation to explain the mechanisms leading to those differences. In particular, it disentangles the effect of demographic and local distribution of ethnic groups on risk-sharing network formation from cultural and social distance between ethnic groups, while controlling for the disparities in the geographical environment. Results show that ethnic minorities have smaller and less diversified networks than the majority. This is partly explained by differences in wealth and in the geographical environment. But ethnicity also plays a direct role in risk-sharing network formation through the combination of preferences to form a link with people from the same ethnic group (in breeding homophily) and the relative size of ethnic groups conditioning the opportunities to form a link (baseline homophily). In breeding homophily is found to be stronger among the Kinh majority, leading to the exclusion of ethnic minorities from Kinh networks, which are supposed to be more efficient to cope with covariant risk because they are more diversified in the occupation and location of their members. This evidence suggests that inequalities among ethnic groups in Viet Nam are partly rooted in the cultural and social distances between them.

Keywords: Réseau de solidarité; homophilie; inégalités inter-ethniques; homophily; ethnic gap; Viet Nam; Risk-sharing network; Vietnam (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-net, nep-sea, nep-soc, nep-tra and nep-ure
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