The Evolving Ethnic Gaps in Welfare in Viet Nam over the past 20 Years is MPP’s seminar for students, lecturers of VJU and who concern about the issue.
Date and Time: Thursday at 9:00 – 11:00 AM on 19 August 2021
Guest Speaker: Dr. Dang Hoang Hai Anh – Senior Economist,
Data Production and Methods Unit (Development Data Group), World Bank
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/8135106997?pwd=dXk4WTNHQ1Q4K2dNZ1ZkTHlhWlhiUT09
Meeting ID: 813 510 6997
Passcode: VJUMPP
Since its economic reform in 1986, Viet Nam has witnessed steady economic growth that increased the country’s living standards and significantly reduced its poverty. This beneficial growth rate, if continued uninterrupted, would place the country on an upward, stable trajectory toward a high-income country status. Yet, there are concerns that the fruits of economic growth might have been unequally shared by different ethnic groups in the country. Promoting equitable growth and equalities of opportunities for different population groups, particularly ethnic minorities, has been highlighted by the government as a key solution to social cohesion and improved labor productivity (World Bank and MPI, 2016).
Indeed, despite their smaller share of 16 percent of the population, ethnic minority groups (i.e., non-Kinh Hoa ethnic groups) make up as much as 86 percent of the country’s poor in 2018. This income disparity is consistent with the patterns in early periods (Dang, 2012; Fuji, 2018) but, more worrisomely, represents a seemingly widening gap between ethnic groups over time. Figure 1 shows that poverty has been steadily decreasing for both ethnic groups over the past decade of 2010-2018. Yet, the speed of poverty reduction sharply differs. The ethnic majority group started off in 2010 with a (headcount) poverty rate of 12.7 percent, but could almost eliminate poverty in 2018 with a poverty rate of 1 percent (Figure 1, left vertical axis). At the same time, ethnic minority groups could only cut their poverty rate by less than half, from 64.8 percent to 36.7 percent in 2010 and 2018 respectively. Figure 1 also shows that the ethnic gap in household consumption per capita also becomes larger. This gap expands by more than twice during the same period, from around 11 million Vietnamese dong to roughly 25 million Vietnamese dong (Table 1, column 4).
Dr. Dang Hoang Anh will present our research brief on these widening ethnic gaps in the seminar.