This paper uses mean and quantile regression analysis to investigate the gender pay gap for the wage employed in Vietnam over the period 1993 to 2002. It finds that the Doi moi reforms appear to have been associated with a sharp reduction in gender pay gap disparities for the wage employed. The average gender pay gap in this sector halved between 1993 and 2002 with most of the contraction evident by 1998. There has also been a narrowing in the gender pay gap at most selected points of the conditional wage distribution, an effect most pronounced at the top end of the conditional wage distribution. However, the decomposition analysis suggests that the treatment effect is relatively stable across the conditional wage distribution and little evidence of a 'glass-ceiling' effect is detected for Vietnamese women in the wage employment sector in any of the years examined.

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Although economic reform has brought remarkable progress in poverty reduction in Vietnam, the scale and depth of ethnic minority poverty in Vietnam presents one of the major challenges to achieving the targets for poverty reduction set out in the SocioEconomic Development Plan, as well as the Millennium Development Goals. We first review a series of monetary and non-monetary indicators, which show that the living standards of the ethnic minorities are improving but still lag seriously behind those of the majority Kinh-Hoa. The minorities" lower living standards result from the complex interplay of overlapping disadvantages, which start in utero and continue until adult life. Next, an analysis of the drivers of the ethnic gap, in terms of both differences in characteristics and differences in returns to those characteristics, is undertaken. Mean and quantile decompositions show that at least a half of the gap in per capita expenditure can be attributed to the lower returns to characteristics that the ethnic minorities receive. The reasons underlying such differences in returns are discussed, drawing on both quantitative analysis and the large number of qualitative studies on ethnic issues in Vietnam. Finally, some of the short-and longer-term policy measures which we believe could help to counter ethnic disadvantages in the nutrition, education and employment sectors are discussed. We also emphasise the importance of promoting growth that is geographically broad and socially inclusive − without which, the current disparities between the Kinh-Hoa and the ethnic minorities will continue to grow.

This paper implements and adapts the conceptual framework developed by Winters (2002) that identifies the transmission mechanisms between trade policy reform and household welfare outcomes. We make use of household panel data from Vietnam collected in two years, 1992-93 and 1997-98 that span the very earliest years of the reform period and its immediate after effects. Poverty dynamics are modeled using changes in consumption expenditure and poverty transition models. The trade effect is captured by a set of variables that are most likely to have an impact on rural poverty, namely prices of staples and employment in the export sector. We show that trade liberalization has a material and positive effect on rural household welfare and this trade effect is largely transmitted to the poor through the labor market channel.

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