Poverty, inequality and ethnic minorities in Vietnam

Katsushi Imai, Raghav Gaiha and Woojin Kang ()

International Review of Applied Economics, 2011, vol. 25, issue 3, 249-282

Abstract: The present study examines how and why ethnic minorities are poorer than ethnic majorities in Vietnam using the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey data for 2002 and 2004. First, the analysis confirms that households belonging to the ethnic minority groups are not only poorer but also more vulnerable to various shocks than those in the ethnic majority groups, namely the Kinh and the Chinese. Second, household composition (e.g., dependency burden), education, land holding and location are important determinants of expenditure and poverty, whilst there is some diversity among different ethnic groups. Finally, the decomposition analyses reveal that the ethnic minorities are poorer not necessarily because they have more disadvantaged household characteristics (e.g., educational attainment or location), but, more importantly, because the returns to the characteristics are much lower for ethnic minorities than for the majorities. Government policies to reduce structural differences between ethnic majorities and minorities are imperative to address the disparities in returns to endowments between them.

Keywords: Vietnam; ethnic minority; poverty; inequality; decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02692171.2010.483471 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Poverty, Inequality and Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam (2007)
Working Paper: Poverty, inequality and ethnic minorities in Vietnam (2007)
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:taf:irapec:v:25:y:2011:i:3:p:249-282

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIRA20

DOI: 10.1080/02692171.2010.483471

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Applied Economics is currently edited by Professor Malcolm Sawyer

More articles in International Review of Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().