Estimating poverty and vulnerability to monetary and non-monetary poverty: the case of Vietnam

Anh Thu Quang Pham, Pundarik Mukhopadhaya and Ha Vu ()
Additional contact information
Ha Vu: Macquarie University

Empirical Economics, 2021, vol. 61, issue 6, No 7, 3125-3177

Abstract: Abstract Drawing on three-wave panel data from the Vietnam Housing Living Standard Surveys (VHLSS) 2010, 2012, and 2014 and employing a fuzzy method, this paper estimates chronic and transient poverty across multiple dimensions (income, education, health, housing, basic services, durable assets, economic status) in Vietnam. Using standard deviation as a measure of risk, this study further defines vulnerability as a probability for becoming poor and estimates vulnerability to poverty from the stochastic variation of expected deprivation within a defined interval. We further apply the method of multilevel analysis to assess the deprivation of households and distinguish vulnerability as influenced by idiosyncratic (household-specific-level) and covariate (province-level) shocks. It is observed that while the number of chronic poor in all dimensions is quite low, the proportion of chronic poor in the housing dimension is the highest (around 5% over the applicable years nationwide). Regional variation in non-monetary dimensions of poverty is substantial and clearly distinct from monetary poverty. We show that there are more multidimensionally poor households that are vulnerable to idiosyncratic shocks than to covariate shocks, and the proportion of vulnerable households (to covariate shocks) in the housing dimension is significantly greater than that in other dimensions. Almost all covariates of household and province are significantly different between vulnerable and non-vulnerable groups across the multiple dimensions of poverty other than health. Our findings suggest an urgent need for policy attention on the explicit nature of vulnerability and on the many dimensions of poverty in specific regions, and to look beyond the current official monetary-based approach.

Keywords: Chronic poverty; Transient poverty; Vulnerability; Risk; Vietnam; Multilevel; Regional (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I30 I32 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-020-01991-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
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:spr:empeco:v:61:y:2021:i:6:d:10.1007_s00181-020-01991-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... rics/journal/181/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00181-020-01991-4

Access Statistics for this article

Empirical Economics is currently edited by Robert M. Kunst, Arthur H.O. van Soest, Bertrand Candelon, Subal C. Kumbhakar and Joakim Westerlund

More articles in Empirical Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().