The Impact of A National Poverty Reduction Program on Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam: The Lens of Baseline and Endline Surveys

Nguyen, Cuong and Phung, Thu and Phung, Tung and Vu, Ngoc and Westbrook, Daniel (2012): The Impact of A National Poverty Reduction Program on Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam: The Lens of Baseline and Endline Surveys.

Abstract

To increase the opportunities for poor ethnic minorities to benefit from economic growth the government of Vietnam implemented one of the biggest poverty reduction programs entitled ‘Socio-economic Development for the Communes Facing Greatest Hardships in the Ethnic Minority and Mountainous Areas’ during 2006-2010. This paper provides empirical evidence of this program’s impacts on households in the project areas. We find that theprogram had positive impacts on several important outcomes of the ethnic minority households, including productive asset ownership, household durables ownership, and rice productivity. Among higher-order outcomes, they enjoyed positive impacts in income from agriculture, household total income, and household per-capita income. A particularly important result is that poverty among minority households in treatment communes declined significantly more than it declined in comparison communes. Finally, ethnic minority households enjoyed a reduction in travel time to health facilities, relative to households in control communes.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Poverty reduction, ethnic minority, household survey, Vietnam
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I32 - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I38 - Government Policy ; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

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