Person:
Dang, Hai-Anh H.

Poverty and Inequality Unit, Development Research Group, The World Bank

Fields of Specialization

development economics, poverty analysis, synthetic panels

External Links

WB/Dang

Departments

Poverty and Inequality Unit, Development Research Group, The World Bank

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Hai-Anh H. Dang is an Economist in the Poverty and Inequality Unit, Development Research Group, World Bank. He received his B.A. from Foreign Trade University, Vietnam and his Ph.D. in Applied Economics from University of Minnesota. His main research is on development, poverty, education, labor, and methodology to construct synthetic (pseudo) panel data from cross sections. He has published in journals such as Economic Development and Cultural Change, Economics of Education Review, European Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review, as well as a book on private tutoring in Vietnam.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 44

Measuring Poverty Dynamics with Synthetic Panels Based on Cross-Sections

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06) Dang, Hai-Anh ; Lanjouw, Peter

Panel data conventionally underpin the analysis of poverty mobility over time. However, such data are not readily available for most developing countries. Far more common are the “snap-shots” of welfare captured by cross-section surveys. This paper proposes a method to construct synthetic panel data from cross sections which can provide point estimates of poverty mobility. In contrast to traditional pseudo-panel methods that require multiple rounds of cross-sectional data to study poverty at the cohort level, the proposed method can be applied to settings with as few as two survey rounds and also permits investigation at the more disaggregated household level. The procedure is implemented using cross-section survey data from several countries, spanning different income levels and geographical regions. Estimates fall within the 95 percent confidence interval— or even one standard error in many cases—of those based on actual panel data. The method is not only restricted to studying poverty mobility but can also accommodate investigation of other welfare outcome dynamics.
The Decision to Invest in Child Quality over Quantity : Household Size and Household Investment in Education in Vietnam

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06) Dang, Hai-Anh ; Rogers, F. Halsey

During Vietnam's two decades of rapid economic growth, its fertility rate has fallen sharply at the same time that its educational attainment has risen rapidly -- macro trends that are consistent with the hypothesis of a quantity-quality tradeoff in child-rearing. This paper investigates whether the micro-level evidence supports the hypothesis that Vietnamese parents are in fact making a tradeoff between quantity and quality of children. The paper presents new measures of household investment in private tutoring, together with traditional measures of household investments in education. It analyzes data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys and instruments for family size using the distance to the nearest family planning center. The estimation results show that families do indeed invest less in the education of school-age children who have larger numbers of siblings. This effect holds for several indicators of educational investment -- including general education expenditure and various measures of private tutoring investment -- and is robust to various definitions of family size and model specifications that control for community characteristics as well as the distance to the city center. Finally, the results suggest that tutoring may be a better measure of quality-oriented household investments in education than traditional measures like enrollment, which are arguably less nuanced and household-driven.
Private Tutoring in Vietnam: A Review of Current Issues and Its Major Correlates

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2013-09) Dang, Hai-Anh H.

Building on the earlier work, this paper provides an updated review of the private tutoring phenomenon in Vietnam in several aspects, including the reasons, scale, intensity, form, cost, and legality of these classes. In particular, the paper offers a comparative analysis of the trends in private tutoring between 1998 and 2006 where data are available. Several (micro-) correlates are examined that are found to be strongly correlated with student attendance at tutoring, including household income, household head education and residence area, student current grade level, ethnicity, and household size. In particular, the analysis focuses on the last three variables, which have received little attention in the previous literature on the determinants of tutoring.
Incentives and Teacher Effort : Further Evidence from a Developing Country

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-11) Dang, Hai-Anh H. ; King, Elizabeth M.

Few would contest that teachers are a very important determinant of whether students learn in school. Yet, in the face of compelling evidence that many students are not learning what they are expected to learn, how to improve teacher performance has been the focus of much policy debate in rich and poor countries. This paper examines how incentives, both pecuniary and non-pecuniary, influence teacher effort. Using school survey data from Lao PDR, it estimates new measures of teacher effort, including the number of hours that teachers spend preparing for classes and teacher provision of private tutoring classes outside class hours. The estimation results indicate that teachers increase effort in response to non-pecuniary incentives, such as greater teacher autonomy over teaching materials, and monitoring mechanism, such as the existence of an active parent-teacher association and the ability of school principals to dismiss teachers. Methodologically, the paper provides a detailed derivation of a simultaneous ordinary least squares-probit model with school random effects that can jointly estimate teacher work hours and tutoring provision.
The Impact of Decentralized Data Entry on the Quality of Household Survey Data in Developing Countries:

(World Bank, 2008-01-30) Glewwe, Paul ; Dang, Hai-Anh Hoang

Computers were provided to randomly selected districts participating in a household survey in Vietnam to assess the impact on data quality of entering data within a day or two of completing the interview rather than several weeks later in the provincial capital. Provision of computers had no significant effect on the observed distribution of household expenditures and thus no effect on measured poverty. Provision of computers reduced the mean number of errors per household by 5–23 percent, depending on the type of error. Given the already low rate of errors in the survey, however, the goal of increasing the precision of the estimated mean of a typical variable can be achieved at a much lower cost by slightly increasing the sample size. Provision of additional computers did substantially reduce the time interviewers spent adding up and checking the data in the field, with the value of the time saved close to the cost of purchasing desktop computers.
Childcare and Maternal Employment: Evidence from Vietnam

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-05) Dang, Hai-Anh H. ; Hiraga, Masako ; Nguyen, Cuong Viet

Little literature currently exists on the effects of childcare use on maternal labor market outcomes in a developing country context, and recent studies offer mixed results. This paper attempts to fill these gaps by analyzing several of the latest rounds of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey spanning the early to mid-2010s. Addressing endogeneity issues with a regression discontinuity estimator based on children's birth months, the paper finds a sizable effect of childcare attendance on women's labor market outcomes, including their total annual wages, household income, and poverty status. The effects of childcare attendance differ by women's characteristics and are particularly strong for younger, more educated women. Furthermore, childcare has a medium-term effect and positively impacts men's labor market outcomes as well.
Welfare Dynamics Measurement : Two Definitions of a Vulnerability Line and Their Empirical Application

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-06) Dang, Hai-Anh H. ; Lanjouw, Peter F.

Little research currently exists on a vulnerability line that distinguishes the poor population from the population that is not poor but that still faces significant risk of falling back into poverty. This paper attempts to fill this gap by proposing vulnerability lines that can be straightforwardly estimated with panel or cross-sectional household survey data, in rich- and poor-country settings. These vulnerability lines offer a means to broaden traditional poverty analysis and can also assist with the identification of the middle class or resilient population groups. Empirical illustrations are provided using panel data from the United States (Panel Study of Income Dynamics) and Vietnam (Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey) for the period 2004-2008 and cross-sectional data from India (National Sample Survey) for the period 2004-2009. The estimation results indicate that in Vietnam and India during this time period, the population living in poverty and the middle class have been falling and expanding, respectively, while the opposite has been occurring in the United States.
Updating Poverty Estimates at Frequent Intervals in the Absence of Consumption Data : Methods and Illustration with Reference to a Middle-Income Country

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-09) Dang, Hai-Anh H. ; Lanjouw, Peter F. ; Serajuddin, Umar

Obtaining consistent estimates on poverty over time as well as monitoring poverty trends on a timely basis is a priority concern for policy makers. However, these objectives are not readily achieved in practice when household consumption data are neither frequently collected, nor constructed using consistent and transparent criteria. This paper develops a formal framework for survey-to-survey poverty imputation in an attempt to overcome these obstacles, and to elevate the discussion of these methods beyond the largely ad-hoc efforts in the existing literature. The framework introduced here imposes few restrictive assumptions, works with simple variance formulas, provides guidance on the selection of control variables for model building, and can be generally applied to imputation either from one survey to another survey with the same design, or to another survey with a different design. Empirical results analyzing the Household Expenditure and Income Survey and the Unemployment and Employment Survey in Jordan are quite encouraging, with imputation-based poverty estimates closely tracking the direct estimates of poverty.
Toward a New Definition of Shared Prosperity: A Dynamic Perspective from Three Countries

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06) Dang, Hai-Anh H. ; Lanjouw, Peter F.

This paper proposes a new measure of growth in shared prosperity, based on shifts in population shares of different income groups over time. This measure complements the definition of shared prosperity recently proposed by the World Bank in which income growth of the bottom 40 percent is examined. The new measure’s strengths arise from its close ties to countries’ national poverty lines and poverty measures, its focus on inclusion of the vulnerable population, and its identification of a population segment that is neither poor nor at significant risk of falling into poverty. The paper also offers a typology of scenarios for tracking shared prosperity under this measure. It provides illustrative examples using survey data from India, the United States, and Vietnam for the mid-to-late 2000s. Estimation results comparing the two approaches with measuring the evolution of shared prosperity are qualitatively consistent, and suggest that during this period, Vietnam enjoyed the greatest expansion in shared prosperity, followed by India and then the United States.
Who Remained in Poverty, Who Moved Up, and Who Fell Down? An Investigation of Poverty Dynamics in Senegal in the Late 2000s

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-12) Dang, Hai-Anh H. ; Lanjouw, Peter F. ; Swinkels, Rob

Poverty estimates based on cross-section data provide static snapshots of poverty rates. Although a time series of cross-section data can offer some insights into poverty trends, it does not allow for an assessment of dynamics at the household level. Such a dynamic perspective on poverty generally calls for panel data and this kind of analysis can usefully inform poverty reduction policy, notably the design of social protection interventions. Absent actual panel data for Senegal, this paper applies new statistical methods to construct synthetic panel data from two rounds of cross-section household surveys in 2005 and 2011. These data are used to study poverty transitions. The results suggest that, in marked contrast to the picture obtained from cross-section data, there exists a great deal of mobility in and out of poverty during this period. More than half the population experiences changes in its poverty status and more than two-thirds of the extreme (food) poor move up one or two welfare categories. Factors such as rural residence, disability, exposure to some kind of natural disaster, and informality in the labor market are associated with a heightened risk of falling into poverty. Belonging to certain ethnicities and factors such as migration, working in the non-agriculture sector, and having access to social capital are associated with a lower risk of falling into poverty.