Ethnic minority development in Vietnam

Abstract

This study examines the disparities in living standards between and among the different ethnic groups in Vietnam. Using data from the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys and 1999 Census, we show that 'majority' Kinh and Hoa households have substantially higher living standards than 'minority' households from Vietnam's 52 other ethnic groups. While the Kinh, Hoa, Khmer and Northern Highland Minorities benefited from economic growth in the 1990s, the position of the Central Highland Minorities stagnated. Decompositions show that even if minority households had the same endowments as Kinh households, this would close no more than a third of the gap in their per capita expenditures. While some ethnic minorities seem to be doing well out of a strategy of assimilating with the Kinh-Hoa majority, others groups are attempting to integrate economically while retaining distinct cultural identities, and a third group is largely being left behind by the growth process.

Promoting equity to achieve maternal and child health

“…37 There are instead great divides between rural and urban populations, and ethnic minority groups are marginalized. 38 Ethnic minorities are disproportionately poor and usually live in more remote areas. 38 However, this is not the only reason for the worse health situation of these groups.…”

“…38 Ethnic minorities are disproportionately poor and usually live in more remote areas. 38 However, this is not the only reason for the worse health situation of these groups. Ethnic minorities are less well covered by social benefits aimed at the poor than their majority counterparts.…”

Are Uzbeks Better Off than Kyrgyz? Measuring and Decomposing Horizontal Inequality

“…Those weights appear questionable to us as they increased substantially between 2003 and 2005, relatively more so for Uzbeks than for the other ethnic groups, and then stayed much higher for this particular ethnicity. 5 We were told by NSC that the calculation of weights takes into consideration the sampling probability of primary sampling units in each stratum and the sampling probability of households in these units. These weights are then modified in order to give a realistic picture of different age groups (children, working age adults, elderly) in society, but they reportedly do not control for …”

“…Such a portrayal implies that the violence is considered to be the result of horizontal inequalities and that Uzbeks are economically better off. This makes Kyrgyzstan a particularly interesting case to investigate, as it is the minority group that is supposedly better off; whereas in many other countries, in which ethnic inequality has been studied, it is the majority group that is privileged (Baulch, et al, 2007, Gradín, 2009, Gustafsson and Shi, 2003, van de Walle and Gunewardena, 2001). As suggested by Chua (2003), countries with an economically dominant ethnic minority may be particularly subject to ethnic hatred and violent conflict.…”

Information and Communication Technology

“…Using household income as an indicator for welfare, research has found not only that the non-Kinh were systematically worse off than the Kinh but also that this gap widened during the 1990s (Van de Walle and Gunewardena 2001; Baulch et al 2007;Baulch, Pham, and Reilly, 2012) and the likelihood of them escaping poverty was relatively much smaller (Glewwe, Gragnolati, and Zaman 2002). 1 A variety of explanations have been put forward for the poor performance of the minority households in Viet Nam.…”