03. Journals
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These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.
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Was Vietnam's Economic Growth in the 1990s Pro-poor? An Analysis of Panel Data from Vietnam
( 2011) Glewwe, Paul ; Dang, Hai-Anh HoangInternational aid agencies and almost all economists agree that economic growth is necessary for reducing poverty, yet some economists question whether it is sufficient for poverty reduction. Vietnam enjoyed rapid economic growth in the 1990s, but a modest increase in inequality during that decade raises the possibility that the poor in Vietnam benefited little from that growth. This article examines the extent to which Vietnam's economic growth has been "pro-poor," giving particular attention to two issues. The first is the appropriate comparison group. When comparing the poorest x% of the population at two points in time, should the poorest x% in the first time period be compared to the poorest x% in the second time period (some of whom were not the poorest x% in the first time period) or to the same people in the second time period (some of whom are no longer among the poorest x%)? The second is measurement error. Estimates of growth among the poorest x% of the population are likely to be biased if income or expenditure is measured with error. Household survey data show that Vietnam's growth has been relatively equally shared across poor and nonpoor groups. Indeed, comparisons of the same people over time indicate that per capita expenditures of the poor increased much more rapidly than those of the nonpoor, although failure to correct for measurement error exaggerates this result. -
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The Impact of Migration on Food Consumption Patterns : The Case of Vietnam
( 2011) Nguyen, Minh Cong ; Winters, PaulThis paper explores the relationship between migration and consumption patterns using panel data from the 2004 and 2006 Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys. Employing an instrumental variable approach to control for the endogeneity of migration, our results indicate that short-term migration has a positive effect on overall per capita food expenditures, per capita calorie consumption and food diversity. Long-term migration also appears to be positively related to consumption, but impacts are often insignificant and of a lesser magnitude than short-term migration. The results provide no evidence of negative effects of migration, and support the view that short-term migration is a mechanism by which households maintain food security. The results suggest that to improve food security the Vietnamese government should enact policies that facilitate short-term migration flows as well as the transferring of remittances. -
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Fungibility and the Impact of Development Assistance: Evidence from Vietnam's Health Sector
( 2011) Wagstaff, AdamThe apparent fungibility of aid is a challenge to the evaluation of donor-funded development projects, requiring a comparison of the observed outcomes with the outcomes that would have occurred if the project had not gone ahead. Where projects are targeted on specific geographic areas, counterfactual outcomes in each can differ from observed outcomes because the amount of government spending (gross of aid) differs, the productivity of government spending differs, or both. This paper estimates the benefits of two concurrent World Bank health projects in Vietnam targeted on specific provinces. Estimates are derived from a model linking outcomes (under-five mortality) to government spending before and after the project and in project and nonproject provinces, and are presented for different assumptions regarding fungibility of funds (zero and full fungibility) and the impacts of the project on the productivity of government spending (the project modifies productivity in both sectors equally and in neither sector). The estimated mortality reductions are highly insensitive to the assumed degree of fungibility, but highly sensitive to the assumed productivity effects (the estimates range from 1 to 25%). The wide range reflects the uncertainty due to the lack of a genuine control group of provinces. -
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Poverty and Inequality Maps in Rural Vietnam: An Application of Small Area Estimation
( 2010) Nguyen, Viet Cuong ; Tran, Ngoc Truong ; van der Weide, RoyThe objective of the present paper is to estimate poverty and inequality for rural Vietnam at different levels of aggregation by combining the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey from 2006 and the Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census from the same year. Using the small area estimation method, estimates at the regional, provincial and district level are produced, and both expenditure and income based measures are considered. It is found that all provinces across the country have experienced a noticeable reduction in rural poverty during the period 1999-2006. Some of the largest reductions in poverty are observed for provinces with poverty rates close to the national average. The poorest provinces are experiencing reductions in poverty, albeit at a more modest pace. Provinces and districts with a larger poverty reduction in the period 1999-2006 tended to have a lower level of inequality in 2006. Results based on expenditure poverty estimates are found to be very similar to those based on income poverty estimates. -
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Estimating Health Insurance Impacts under Unobserved Heterogeneity : The Case of Vietnam's Health Care Fund for the Poor
( 2010) Wagstaff, AdamVietnam's health care fund for the poor (HCFP) uses government revenues to finance health care for the poor, ethnic minorities living in selected mountainous provinces, and all households living in communes officially designated as highly disadvantaged. As of 2006, the program, which started in 2003, covered around 60% of those eligible. Those who were covered (about 20% of the population) were disproportionately poor, and around 80% of those covered were eligible. Estimates of the program's impact were obtained using a method that takes into account unobserved heterogeneity--including unobserved idiosyncratic returns--but requires minimal assumptions. The downside is that it provides an estimate only of the program's impact on those covered by it; it cannot therefore answer the question of how those currently uncovered will fare when they are eventually covered. The results suggest that HCFP has had no impact on use of services, but has substantially reduced out-of-pocket spending. -
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A Micro-decomposition Analysis of Aggregate Human Development Outcomes
( 2010) Lambert, Sylvie ; Ravallion, Martin ; van de Walle, DominiqueWe show how differences in aggregate human development outcomes over time and space can be additively decomposed into a pure mean income (growth) component, a component attributed to differences in the distribution of income, and components attributed to 'non-income' factors and differences in the model linking outcomes to income and non-income characteristics. The income effect at the micro level is modelled non-parametrically, so as to flexibly reflect potentially complex distributional changes. Our proposed method is illustrated using data for Morocco and Vietnam, and the results offer some surprising insights into the observed aggregate gains in schooling attainments. -
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The Importance of Being Wanted
( 2010) Do, Quy-Toan ; Phung, Tung D.We identify birth wantedness as a source of better child outcomes. In Vietnam, the year of birth is widely believed to determine success. As a result, cohorts born in auspicious years are 12 percent larger. Comparing siblings with one another, those of auspicious cohorts are found to have two extra months of schooling. The Vietnamese horoscope being gender-specific, this difference will be shown to be driven by birth planning. Children born in auspicious years are more likely to have been planned, thus benefitting from a more favorable growth environment. -
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Reranking and Pro-poor Growth: Decompositions for China and Vietnam
( 2009) Wagstaff, AdamReranking in the move from one income distribution to another makes it impossible to infer from changes in Lorenz and generalised Lorenz curves how income growth among those toward the bottom of the initial income distribution compares to that among those toward the top, and whether there has been income growth among those who were initially poor. Decompositions allowing for reranking indicate that economic growth in China and Vietnam has been better for households who were initially poor than changes in the Lorenz and generalised Lorenz curve and poverty growth curve would suggest. -
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Rural Income Generating Activities: Whatever Happened to the Institutional Vacuum? Evidence from Ghana, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Vietnam
( 2009) Zezza, Alberto ; Carletto, Gero ; Davis, Benjamin ; Stamoulis, Kostas ; Winters, PaulThis paper assesses the current rural development practice against the main trends in recent rural development thinking, based on evidence from four country case studies. While much progress has been made in understanding the need to look beyond only agriculture for the promotion of productive activities in rural areas, and the "institutional vacuum" consistently identified in the rural non-farm (RNF) literature is gradually being filled, much remains to be done. One aspect on which more research is particularly needed is the development of better mechanisms to promote productive investment rather than just social investment and to assess the appropriate level--community, regional, and national--at which to do this.