After the Reforms: Determinants of Wage Growth and Change in Wage Inequality in Vietnam - 1998 -2008

Zheng Fang and Christos Sakellariou

No 1006, Economic Growth Centre Working Paper Series from Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences, Economic Growth Centre

Abstract: The Vietnam “renovation” reforms were implemented during the 1990s, but their full effect was only felt several years later. We present evidence on the developments in real wage growth and inequality in Vietnam from 1998 to 2008. Wage growth was underpinned by changes in the wage structure (mainly associated with experience group) and residual changes. Growth in productive characteristics (mainly education) contributed to wage growth only at higher points of the wage distribution. Conventional measures of inequality as well as a decomposition of the Gini coefficient show that wage inequality decreased sharply through the 1990s until 2006, but levelled-off subsequently. The main contributors to changing inequality were again education (through the composition effect) and over-time changes in the return to experience. The paper also discusses the possible effects of minimum wage policies on wage inequality in Vietnam.

Keywords: Wage inequality; unconditional quantile regression; Asia; Vietnam (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D33 J31 J42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2010-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-lab, nep-sea and nep-tra
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: After the reforms: Determinants of wage growth and change in wage inequality in Vietnam: 1998-2008 (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nan:wpaper:1006

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