Rapid Economic Growth but Rising Poverty Segregation: Will Vietnam Meet the SDGs for Equitable Development?

Hai-Anh Dang (), Shatakshee Dhongde, Minh N. N. Do, Cuong Viet Nguyen and Obert Pimhidzai

Review of Development Economics, 2025, vol. 29, issue 4, 2063-2075

Abstract: Vietnam is widely regarded as a success story for its impressive economic growth and poverty reduction in the last few decades. Yet, recent evidence indicates that the country's economic growth has not been uniform. Compiling and analyzing new extensive province‐level data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys (VHLSSs) spanning 2002 and 2020 and other data sources, we find within‐province inequality to be much larger than between‐province inequality. Furthermore, this inequality gap is rising over time. Despite the country's fast poverty reduction, the poor were increasingly segregated in certain provinces, particularly those with a larger ethnic minority population. We find beneficial impact of economic growth on poverty reduction, but this can depend on inequality levels. We also find greater inequality to have negative effects on economic growth but varying negative effects on different poverty indicators. We also find some supportive evidence for the beneficial impact of economic transitions from agriculture to non‐agriculture. Our results suggest that policy makers in Vietnam should focus on reducing spatial disparities and income inequality to attain sustainable economic development.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/rode.13175

Related works:
Working Paper: Rapid economic growth but rising poverty segregation: will Vietnam meet the SDGs for equitable development? (2025)
Working Paper: Rapid Economic Growth but Rising Poverty Segregation: Will Viet Nam Meet the SDGs for Equitable Development ? (2025)
Working Paper: Rapid Economic Growth but Rising Poverty Segregation: Will Vietnam Meet the SDGs for Equitable Development? (2023)
Working Paper: Rapid Economic Growth but Rising Poverty Segregation: Will Vietnam Meet the SDGs for Equitable Development? (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:rdevec:v:29:y:2025:i:4:p:2063-2075

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1363-6669

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Development Economics is currently edited by E. Kwan Choi

More articles in Review of Development Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().