                      

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Publication of this volume was supported by the 21st Century Center of Excellence(CEO) Program of Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).
©Vietnam Development Forum, 2007
Printed in JapanAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be introduced or translated intoanother language in any form or by any means, including photocopy or website uploading, without permission in writing from the Vietnam Development Forum.
The responsibility of facts and opinions expressed in this publication rests exclusively
with the authors, and their interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or policyof the Vietnam Development Forum, and other institutions and individuals mentioned inthis publication.

CONTENTS

About the Authors ⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯i
Acknowledgements ⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯iii
Chapter 1

Introduction and Summary
Giang Thanh Long and Duong Kim Hong ⋯⋯⋯1

Chapter 2

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and
New Causes in a Growing Economy
Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno ⋯⋯⋯11

Chapter 3

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for
Sex Workers: The Case of Quang Ninh Province
Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha ⋯⋯⋯49

Chapter 4Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam
Dang Nguyen Anh ⋯⋯⋯87

Chapter 5

Sustainable Education Development under Globalization,and the Reforms of Teaching and Learning Methods inTeacher Training
Nguyen Thi Phuong Hoa ⋯⋯121

Chapter 6

Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social
Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam
Tran Duy Dong ⋯⋯151

Chapter 7

The Elderly Population in Vietnam during Economic
Transformation: An Overview
Giang Thanh Long and Wade Donald Pfau ⋯⋯185

ABOUT THE AUTHORSDANG NGUYEN ANH is a professor, senior researcher, and vice-director of
the Department of International Cooperation at the Vietnam Academy ofSocial Sciences (VASS). He has established an intellectual network withother countries in the East and Southeast Asian region. He participates andcoordinates a range of research activities dealing with social development,
population, adolescents, migration, and labor mobility. His list of publications includes numerous monographs, several books and academic articles.
He holds a Ph.D degree in sociology from Brown University.
DUONG KIM HONG is a researcher at the Vietnam Development Forum(VDF) Hanoi. Her research interests include social issues related to street
children and rural-urban migration. She is involved in a number of social
research projects and surveys in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. She earned a
Bachelor degree from Foreign Trade University, Hanoi.
GIANG THANH LONG is a lecturer of the Faculty of Economics, National
Economics University in Hanoi, and a researcher at VDF. His main
research interests are social security, poverty, demographic changes andpension reforms. He has published several articles and research papers onthese themes. He earned a Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree from
Hitotsubashi University, Japan.
LE THI HA is the deputy director at the Department for Social Evils Prevention, Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA). Her
research interests are related to social protection and labor mobility. She
has published a number of articles and papers on these topics. She earned aPh.D degree in economics from the National Economics University, Hanoi.
NGUYEN THI MINH TAM is a senior researcher at the Youth Study Center,
Ministry of Home Affairs. She has participated in a number of research
projects concerning social and economic behaviors of youth, and also published several research reports. She obtained a Ph.D degree in educationsociology from the Institute of Youth, Moscow, Russia.
NGUYEN THI PHUONG HOA is a lecturer of didactics at the School of
Foreign Languages at the Hanoi National University. Her research interestsiinclude student activating teaching and learning methods, sustainable education reform, and gender mainstreaming. She has published many academic articles, research papers and reports, and a co-authored book. She
obtained a Ph.D degree in pedagogy from the University of Potsdam, Germany.
OHNO KENICHI is a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy
Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo, Japan, and the research director of the Vietnam
Development Forum (VDF). He has been working on Vietnam’s development issues for more than ten years with particular interests in industrial
development strategy, street children, and labor migration. He has published numerous articles, papers, and books. He is also personally involvedin various social work to help vulnerable children and their families inVietnam. He holds a Ph.D degree in economics from Stanford University.
PFAU WADE DONALD is an associate professor at the National Graduate
Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo, Japan. He earned a Ph.D
degree in economics from Princeton University. He completed internships
at the U.S. Social Security Administration, the White House, and the U.S.
Senate while he was a student. His main research interests include social
security, pension, and the economics of aging. He published various articles
and papers on these issues. Recently, he is also doing research on economic
and social welfare of Vietnam, especially remittances, poverty, income distribution, and demographic changes and pension reforms.
TRAN DUY DONG is an expert at the Ministry of Planning and Investment(MPI), Vietnam. He is interested in trade liberalization, investment promotion, social and household welfare under economic changes in Vietnam. He
obtained a Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree from Hitotsubashi University, Japan.

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is a collection of papers, which were prepared by VDF
staff as well as by outside researchers who received VDF’s supports. Earlier versions of these papers were presented in many workshops and conferences in Vietnam, Japan, and elsewhere. On behalf of the authors, wewould like to thank all the institutions and individuals, which are numerous
to list here, for their kind and enthusiastic support. Without such support,
we could never have produced this book.
At the Vietnam Development Forum (VDF) in Hanoi, we are
grateful to Professor Kenichi Ohno, a professor of the National Graduate
Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) and the research director of VDF on
the Japanese side, as well as Professor Nguyen Van Thuong, the Rector of
the National Economics University, Hanoi, and the research director of
VDF on the Vietnamese side, for providing all authors of the book withexcellent research conditions. We would like to thank all the researchers of
VDF, particularly Dr. Pham Hong Chuong, the General Manager of VDF,
for their encouragement and support in producing this book.
Many people from GRIPS also contributed greatly to the completion of the book. We are grateful to Professor Donna Amoroso and Ms.
Patricia Decker of the Academic Writing Center for their excellent andtimely editing. We are also thankful all the assistants of the Vietnam
Development Forum (VDF) in Tokyo and GRIPS Development Forum(GDF), especially Ms. Azko Hayashida, Ms. Asuka Suzuki, Ms. Nguyen
Thi Xuan Thuy, and Ms. Midori Chaki, for their tireless assistance in the
preparation of the manuscript, as well as in several related administrative
works.
Last but not least, we are grateful to all the authors for their
excellent contributions. Their diligent work has enabled not only the timely
publication of the book, but also, much more importantly, the dissemination of useful information to both academic research and social policy discussions in Vietnam—a burgeoning country under rapid economic transformation and integration.
Giang Thanh Long and Duong Kim Hong
Editorsiii

Chapter 1
Introduction and Summary
Giang Thanh Long and Duong Kim Hong

After twenty years of reform, Vietnam has changed significantly.
From a backward, centrally-planned and subsidized economy, it is now in theprocess of becoming an open, active, and market economy. Grasping the golden
opportunity of global integration, Vietnam is trying to use its advantages andresources to develop and make further reforms. Currently, Vietnam is regarded
as one of the best performers among developing countries.
However, fast growth and integration have also intensified certainsocial problems and created new ones. Some problems have become more visible, especially in rapidly urbanizing areas. The problems of street children,
prostitution, and HIV/AIDS epidemic transmission are just some of the examples. At the national level, problems in the education system and social welfare,rising inequality, and problems in the life of the elderly population are all pressing questions. With a relatively young population, Vietnam also has to secure
job opportunities and quality of labor for the youth. Apart from these, like anyother country in socio-economic transformation, Vietnam has to cope withincreasing corruption, environmental pollution, a land bubble, and the declineof cultural and spiritual values.
It can be said that Vietnam will not grow and develop sustainably if it
does not squarely address these issues which emerge as a consequence of economic development and social reforms. In this context, conducting studies andproposing policy actions for these social issues is a very urgent task. This book,
among many others in Vietnam, is published for these purposes. It contains six
papers or chapters, each addressing a different topic on the social issues in Vietnam under economic transformation and integration. These papers were revised
in light of comments made at numerous workshops and conferences held inside1Giang Thanh Long and Duong Kim Hongand outside Vietnam. It is the hope of the editors that the contents of this bookwill extend beyond those directly involved in the related field of research, andthat the book will provide crucial information about the current development ofVietnam’s social sector. Following are summaries of these chapters.
The contribution by Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno in Chapter
2 aims to analyze the problem of street children in Vietnam, which arises fromboth traditional causes such as the loss and divorce of parents, as well as newcauses such as economic incentives. The paper first reviews the existing studies
with different definitions and classifications of street children. Then, it uses
data collected from different sources, including the surveys by Terre deshommes Foundation in 1992 and 2002 in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the survey by Nguyen Van Buom and Jonathan Caseley in 1995 in Hanoi, and the survey by the Vietnam Development Forum in 2004 in Hanoi, to compare street
children in both cities over time in terms of number, hometown, and types ofwork.
Going further to see the root causes for such situations, the authors
propose a new typology of street children based on causes (broken family,
mindset problem, and economic migration) and situations (current protection
and future investment). The results indicate that the broken family group ismost difficult to assist, while the economic migration group often shows strong
desire for study and better life. Moreover, street children are not a homogenous
group, and their aspiration is frequently interrupted by various setbacks. It isthus suggested that intervention policies be diversified according to the needs ofeach type of children. To illustrate in detail, six case studies are presented toshow how these causes and situations interact with each other. Although it isadmitted that the reality of street children is far more complex than the current
analysis, the authors suggest that it is necessary to provide counseling and continuous support to guide children to the right path, and help them to apply theiracquired knowledge from education and training to the real situation. Moreover,incentive and assistance to secure a stable job and build a family for each childare much more important tools in policy consideration.
Chapter 3 of the book, written by Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi
Ha, focuses on one of the most popular and hidden channels for the expanding
HIV/AIDS problem in Vietnameae aex workers and waitresses at high risk for2

Introduction and Summary

prostitution to analyze their awareness of HIV/AIDS risk, and to propose anintervention model of HIV/AIDS protection for these workers, which in turnhelps to mitigate the problem. The paper uses data from a survey in 2005 with
150 sex workers and waitresses, 12 local authority officers, and 18 managers orowners of restaurants and hotels in Quang Ninh province, where the HIV/AIDS
problem is extremely serious, and where the highest number of HIV/AIDSinfected people in the country has been recorded. The characteristics of theseworkers are investigated in terms of age, educational level, hometown, and marital status. It is shown that these workers are young; the majority of them arefrom rural areas and have only secondary or high school education.
Though HIV/AIDS causes and consequences seem to be well-understood by the respondents, the results ironically reveal that sex workers and waitresses at high risk for prostitution are not well aware of methods to prevent
HIV, and managers or owners of restaurants and hotels as well as local authority officers do not pay enough attention to the transmission of the dangerous
virus that causes AIDS. For instance, about 70 percent of the workers do notwant or like to use condom, though most of them know that it is an effective
tool of safe sex to prevent HIV/AID transmission. Exploring in detail with age
and educational level, the paper shows that activities outside working hours andpriorities in lives of these workers vary significantly. Also, they have several
choices when facing difficulties, but relying on family is difficult as they feelashamed to talk about their job.
From these analyses, the authors suggest that peer clubs, skill-trainingclasses, and personal counseling are crucial to change attitudes and create good
habits and behaviors of safe sex for sex workers. For the policy implications, it
is recommended that improvements be made in the health care service network,
the condom providing network, and the consulting network for women in difficulties, especially for those who are sex workers and waitresses working at
high-risk locations. Equally important, local government officials must have theright attitude towards HIV/AIDS prevention and protection, in which theyshould apply a more realistic plan to apply HIV/AIDS prevention methods for
waitresses and sex workers, and also work closely with managers and owners of
tourism services and entertainment centers.
Also addressing the economic and social problems of the young pop-3

Giang Thanh Long and Duong Kim Hongulation, Chapter 4 by Dang Nguyen Anh analyzes one of the most important
issues for the youth in rapid economic transition: work and employment. This
paper utilizes the data from the Survey Assessment of Vietnamese Youth(SAVY) in 2003, which was the first nationwide baseline survey of youth
undertaken by the Ministry of Health, Vietnam in collaboration with the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, the World Health Organization, and the United
Nations Children’s Fund. Exploring various characteristics of youth work andemployment, the paper shows that different individual and family conditions
lead to different work and health-related outcomes among Vietnamese youth.
Gender, age, education, and ethnicity are some of the strong determinants of youth employment. Of greater importance, family characteristics,
including paternal occupation, parental availability, and family economic status,
serve as crucial factors in determining the youth employment experience.
Detailed bivariate and multivariate analyses also indicate that risk-taking
behavior of young people is also associated closely with their work status. For
instance, out-of-school youth, migrant youth, and those who are unemployed or
are job-seekers are most likely to be exposed to health risk behaviors, including
smoking and alcoholic drinking. One of the most striking findings of the paper
is that about one-third of youth with college/university degrees were looking for
employment at the time of SAVY. Among numerous possible factors causing
this situation, the author comments that skills taught and knowledge learned aremismatched with those needed by employers in the labor market; in otherwords, there is weak linkage between the education system and the labor market. Based on these analyses, the author asserts that the conventional understanding of youth as a homogenous group is no longer relevant because theyouth is a diverse social demographic group with different characteristics; thus,
it is required that policy makers avoid making their decisions on such a misunderstanding, and that policies be specific enough to meet the needs of each ofthese groups.
Among many policy implications for improving work and employability for the Vietnamese youth, the author emphasizes that policy efforts aimed
at poverty reduction, employment promotion, and income generation for families are a need. More importantly, strengthening the linkages between the education system and the labor market to minimize skill mismatches and to match4

Introduction and Summary

skills to demand are key conditions to improve youth employability. As such, it
is necessary to build capacity and accountability of employment services andjob counseling. In addition to work and employment, it is also necessary to deal
with the issues related to vulnerability and health of unemployed, migrant, or
out-of-school youth. As well as family supports, other specific supports fromthe whole society are essential for such disadvantaged groups.
The striking finding from the previous paper about limited employability of the youth with college/university degree indicates that comprehensive
reforms the tertiary education are a must, and several tasks need to be implemented in order to accomplish these reforms. Dealing with one of the mostimportant issues in reforming the tertiary education, i.e., training of trainers,
Nguyen Thi Phuong Hoa presents her analysis in the Chapter 5 of the book.
Beginning with an overview of the role of education under globalization andscientific development as a crucial task in developing tertiary education, theauthor discusses the current situation of the education system in Vietnam ingeneral and tertiary education in particular under different reforms over time.
The statistical data show that the whole system has been significantly
diversified; achievements are remarkable, given several difficulties that Vietnam has faced in economic transition. However, the author also points out someserious weaknesses of the system, especially in tertiary education. The drawbacks, including poor research and studying conditions, relatively low qualifications of university teaching staff, low education quality, and weak research
capacity, are posing serious social and economic problems as many young people, who compose of an important part of the country’s labor force, are unemployed due to the above mentioned mismatches between their acquired knowledge from tertiary education and the required skills of the labor market. For
instance, 80 percent of the graduates are working in professions different fromthe subjects they studied at university (Ho Chi Minh City [HCMC] National
University, 2006).
To contend with this situation, the author presents the theory of action
research for sustainable reform of the education system, in which six steps need
to be exercised thoroughly in different designs of the education system and policy-making processes. More particularly, the author proposes five steps toreform teaching and learning methods in teacher training, in which the quality

5Giang Thanh Long and Duong Kim Hongof teaching and research is frequently evaluated and adjusted with new objectives.
Along with the economic transformation and integration process ofthe country, the Vietnamese households have also been influenced by rapidchanges in social and economic structure. A research topic of interest for many
researchers is to analyze the impact of such changes on poverty, inequality, andwelfare of the households. Chapter 6 in the book, contributed by Tran Duy
Dong, responds to this research need by utilizing the data from the Vietnam
Living Standard Surveys in 1992/93 and 1997/98 and the Vietnam Household
Living Standards Survey in 2002 to identify the micro-determinants of household welfare and inequality in Vietnam. In this paper, the author uses the dataon per capita real expenditure and per capita real income to pursue his analysis.
For the former set of data, the paper applies the methodology of Wodon (1999)
to identify the determinants of changes in per capita real expenditure. Six possible factors are examined, including gender and education of household headand region.
The estimated results show that poverty incidence is diverse, depending on household characteristics. For example, communal facilities, such as
market availability and electricity, are important in determining living standardsof poor households, but they are not determinants of living standards of richhouseholds. Using panel data to explore who gains from economic growth, theauthor finds that both rural and urban households particularly gained from tradeliberalization during the last decade, though their benefits varied by their own
characteristics. For the latter data set, the author examines income distribution
in Vietnam through growth of real income by constructing ordinary Lorenz andgeneralized Lorenz curves. The findings indicate that social welfare absolutely
increased during 1993–2002 despite the fact that inequality, measured by Gini
coefficient, increased in 1993–1998 and decreased in 1998–2002. Going further
with the sources of welfare changes, the paper finds that income increase during
1993–1998 outpaced that of 1998–2002, but negative impact of higher inequality in the former period led to an increase in total social welfare only relatively
the same as that of the latter period. From these investigations, the author suggests some policy directions in which improvement of communal facilities,building professional skills, and employment services will help Vietnamese

6

Introduction and Summary

people, particularly the poor, get out of poverty, and will mitigate inequality
between regions and areas.
Focusing on another part of the population, Chapter 7 by Giang
Thanh Long and Wade Donald Pfau provides general information about theVietnamese elderly with different aspects on age, gender, marital status, living
arrangements, and poverty status. This paper uses the data from the Vietnam
Living Standard Surveys in 1992/93, 1997/98 and the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey in 2002 and 2004 to show the trend of these indicators
over time. The estimated results show that the aging of the Vietnamese population could be observed, as the percentage of the elderly people (who are 60
years old and older) in the total population increased during the past decade.
The rate was even higher that the projected rate of the United Nations (2005).
The data also show that the urbanization process in Vietnam has continued: the proportion of rural people decreased from more than 80 percent in
1992/93 to about 73 percent in 2004. More importantly, most of the elderly areliving in the Red River Delta and Mekong River Delta. In terms of educational
level, the estimates show that females of all age ranges generally have disadvantages in comparison with males, and this situation can be seen clearly withdecomposition of area (urban and rural) or marital status. Going further withdetailed analysis on the elderly households’ living arrangements, the paper
shows that the traditional (or multi-generational) family structure has beenstrongly maintained in Vietnam. Elderly people play important role in thehouseholds as many of them are heads of the households. This comment is also
supported by fact that many elderly people are still working and doing housework for the households. Among elderly dependents of the households, manyare living with their married son, and this situation is prevalent in rural areas.
One concern pointed out in the paper is that the percentage of elderly living as
dependents declined by about 10 percentage points, while the corresponding
elderly living in only elderly households increased at the same rate during
1992/93–2004; particularly the percentage of one-elderly households also
increased by 3 percentage points in this period. The data of the surveys also
indicate that housing conditions, particularly lighting and hygiene, of the elderly households have improved significantly over time.
The last part of this paper presents the estimates of poverty rates

7

Giang Thanh Long and Duong Kim Hongacross the population by gender and age. In agreement with information indicated elsewhere in the book, the results show that the overall poverty rate in Vietnam decreased rapidly during the past decade, from about 58 percent in
1992/93 to about 19 percent in 2004. Poverty rates are then decomposed bygender and age in order to see the detailed poverty incidence of different groupsof the population. Although it is admitted that the estimates might be biased due
to several possibilities, they still indicate that the hardship tends to occur mostly
at very later ages. Based on these general results, the authors recommend thatsocial welfare policies need to be specific enough with careful consideration ofsocial and economic factors, so as to protect the elderly from risks under swift
economic transformation and integration.

References

Ho Chi Minh City [HCMC] National University. 2006. “Sinh dong “Quoc hoi tre””(Active National Assembly of Youth). Access on October 20, 2006 fromhttp://www.hcmuns.edu.vn/DoanTN/index.aspx?MaTinTuc=812&MaChuDe=29
Ministry of Health; General Statistics Office of Vietnam; World Health Organization;and United Nations Children’s Fund. 2005. The Survey Assessment of Vietnamese
Youth. Hanoi: Ministry of Health.
Nguyen, V. B; and J. Caseley. 1996. Survey on the Situation of Street Children in Hanoi.
Hanoi: Youth Research Institute.
Terre des hommes Foundation. 1992. Children of the Dust in Ho Chi Minh City. Geneva: Terre des hommes Foundation.
Terre des hommes Foundation. 2004. A Study on Street Children in Ho Chi Minh City.
Geneva: Terre des hommes Foundation.
United Nations. 2005. World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision Population
Database. Retrieved from http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=1 on June 11,2006.
Vietnam Development Forum. 2004. Dieu tra ve tre duong pho tai Ha Noi nam 2004
(The Survey on Street Children in Hanoi in 2004), Unpublished. Hanoi: Vietnam
Development Forum.
Wodon, Q. 1999. “Micro Determinants of Consumption, Poverty, Growth, and Inequali-

8Introduction and Summary

ty in Bangladesh.” Policy Research Working Paper No. 2076 Washington, D.C.:
World Bank.
World Bank. 2000. “Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS), 1992–1993: Basic
Information.” Poverty and Human Resources Division, World Bank. (Updated from1994 version.)_______. 2001. “Vietnam Living Standards Survey (VLSS), 1997–1998: Basic Information.” Poverty and Human Resources Division, World Bank.
_______. 2005. “The 2002 and 2004 Vietnam Living Standards Surveys (VHLSS 2002
and 2004).” Retrieved fromhttp://www.worldbank.org.vn/data/VHLSS2002_2004.ppt on June 11, 2006.

9

Chapter 2
Street Children in Vietnam
Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy
Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Abstract
The problem of street children in Vietnam arises from the interaction of traditional causessuch as the loss or divorce of parents and new causes such as economic incentive. This
paper reviews the existing studies for the definition and classification of street children.
Changing conditions are compared across time and between Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
We then propose a new typology of street children based on causes and situations. Causes
are classified into broken family, mindset problem, and economic migration. Situations are
divided into current protection and future investment. It is shown that the broken familygroup is most difficult to assist while the economic migration group often shows strong
desire for study and better life. However, their aspiration is frequently interrupted by various setbacks. Since street children are not a homogenous group, intervention must also bediversified according to the needs of each type of children.

11Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Acknowledgements
First of all, we would like to express our deepest appreciation to theYouth Volunteer Club of the Student Magazine of Vietnam, who helped us conduct the survey on street children in Hanoi in June 2004.
We would also like to thank the officials of the Ministry of Labor,
Invalids and social Affairs (MOLISA) and the Department of Labor, Invalids
and Social Affairs (DOLISA) in Ho Chi Minh City; the Committee of Population, Family and Children in Hanoi; and the Committee of Population, Family
and Children in Hoan Kiem, Ba Dinh, Thanh Xuan, and Tay Ho Districts in
Hanoi for their research support, sincere advice, and the valuable data that they
have provided.
We are also equally grateful to the people at the Terre des hommes
Foundation for sharing with us their precious data and experience in working
with street children. Without their information, our research would have been
incomplete.
In the process of writing this paper, we benefited greatly from many
useful comments by the attendants of several workshops that Vietnam Development Forum hosted or co-hosted in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam
and in Osaka and Tokyo in Japan. We would like to send our best regards andsincere thanks to these participants.
Our workshops would not have been so successful had we notreceived the hospitality and assistance of Dr. Truong Thi Minh Sam (Instituteof Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City) and Ms. Azko Hayashida (National
Graduate Institute for Policy Studies), who helped us with the logistics andorganization of the workshops in Ho Chi Minh City and Japan, respectively.
We are aware that this paper still has limitations. The responsibility
for any remaining errors rests solely with the two authors. At the same time, wewould be very happy to receive any comments or suggestions from the readersof this paper.

12Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

1. Introduction
The problem of street children is one of the most pressing social problems in Vietnam in general and in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in
particular. The sight of children selling chewing gum in restaurants or shining
shoes in street corners has become familiar. People sometimes call them roaming kids or “dust of life.” Although the problem is well known, the dynamic
mechanism that prompts these children to drop out of school and go selling inthe street is yet to be analyzed deeply or comprehensively. Such causes as direpoverty and parents’ divorce may be common to the street children problem inall developing countries, but other causes may be unique to Hanoi and HCMC,
the two cities experiencing an enormous social and economic transformation.
Children end up on the street for a variety of reasons. For some, thestreet is an escape from broken families or domestic violence. For others, street
life is a means of supplementing family income, passing time, and even having
fun. In addition, the breakdown of traditional family values, educational zeal,
and community structure leaves a large number of children without necessary
care and support for their sound growth and development.
Children who work or live on the streets do not have full knowledgeof their rights and are often unaware of risks in unguided urban life. Many ofthem are under the stress of day-to-day living. Some use alcohol or illegal drugs
to relieve the stress and to forget painful experiences. Others are trained to
become professional beggars. Still others commit crimes individually or join
anti-social gangs. Disabled children may be sold to strangers who force them tobeg on streets. Girls seem to be in particular danger as the target of sexualassault and exploitation.
Thanks to the Doi moi (renovation) policy, the people’s average living standard has improved dramatically since the late 1980s. National statistics
show that GDP per capita rose from 156 USD in 1992 to 482 USD in 2002
(General Statistical Office [GSO] 2004). In 1993, 58 percent of the population
was under the poverty line1, but the ratio fell to 37.4 percent in 1998 and to 28.9

1

The poverty line used here is 1 USD/person/day.

13

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

percent in 2002 (GSO 1999, 2004). With these achievements, Vietnam is one of
the best performers among the low-income countries. Despite this, fast growthand global integration have also intensified certain traditional social problems
and created new ones. As the average income rose, some problems grew to bemuch worse and more visible. The problem of street children is one of these2.
Vibrant cities like Hanoi and HCMC generate new opportunities anddemands for jobs like house cleaning, shoe shining, and selling petty goods toresidents and foreign tourists; urban people are unwilling to perform these jobs.
The expectation of cash income encourages rural labor to migrate to the cityand supply such services. Working on the street may be more dangerous andtiresome tiring than tilling paddy fields in the countryside, but it is more profitable. Rural people come to cities even though they have to live separatelyfrom their families and familiar landscape. In addition, the excitement of urbanlife as well as opportunities for education, training, and jobs attract young rural
people like a magnet. These are the “pulling” forces of rural-urban migration.
With the rapid growth of the national economy, rural life in Vietnam
has also changed substantially, sometimes for the better but other times for theworse. The material conditions in villages have improved thanks to better roads,
schools, electrification, medical service, and so on. However, new troubles havealso arisen. The way of thinking and the education level of many villagers cannot catch up with the speed of social and economic change. Traditional values
are weakened while new values to support rural life are slow to emerge. Eachfarmer has increasingly less land to cultivate due to population pressure andtransfer to other uses, which accelerates labor surplus in rural areas. These are
the “pushing” forces of rural-urban migration for both adults and children.
Many researchers, officials, and social workers who work directlywith disadvantaged children in urban areas. Many studies and reports have been
done on this issue with various purposes and methods. Based on this existing
work, we would like to analyze the problem of street children further with special attention on the dynamic implications of Vietnam’s economic growth.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section intro-

2

Other problems that may intensify with economic development include corruption, environmental
destruction, land bubble, the rise of materialism, and the decline of cultural and spiritual values.

14

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

duces alternative definitions and classifications of street children. Section 3
reviews existing studies of street children in HCMC and Hanoi, including therecent survey conducted by VDF. Section 4 analyzes the causes and situationsof street children and the mutual interaction of the two. Dynamic movements
among different situations are also discussed. Section 5 presents some casestudies of former street children. Section 6 concludes the paper and suggests
some issues for future work.

2. Street Children: Who are They?
Street children is the most common term used by international organizations and related agencies to refer to the type of children who are the focus of
our study. This term was also adopted in Vietnam and officially used in government ministries and organizations. Recently, however, some Vietnamese government offices started to use the term children wandering and earning on thestreets instead of the old term for greater precision. In this paper the term street
children continues to be used because it is still widely and internationallyaccepted and has been used for a long time.
Apart from terminology, there is also the problem of defining thesechildren and counting them in accordance with each definition. In Vietnam atpresent, no one knows the exact number of children living or working on thestreet, and estimates vary from one organization to another. Clearly, the problems of definition and counting are closely related. In order to compare thenumbers of street children across time and location, it is necessary to use statistics collected under consistent—or at least similar—definitions. Moreover,street children are not a homogeneous group. Each child has a different family
background, a different reason for being on the street, a different educationlevel, and different requirements to be fulfilled. An effective categorization willbring a better understanding of the problems and the needs of each group of
street children.
2.1. Definitions by the government and international organizations
Street children can be defined in a number of ways. Let us briefly
look at some commonly used definitions, namely, those of the Ministry of15

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), the United Nations Children’s
Fund (UNICEF), and the Terre des hommes Foundation, a Swiss street children
NGO operating in Vietnam since 1989.
According to MOLISA, “street children” is one of the ten groups of
disadvantaged children3. Following the new law of Child care, Protection and
Education by the National Assembly in 2004, MOLISA defines street children
as “children who leave their families, earn their living by themselves, and have
unstable working and living locations; or children wandering on the street with
their families” (National Assembly 2004, p. 2). The number of street children in
the entire country was estimated to be around 19,000 in 2003, of which 1,500
were estimated to be in Hanoi and nearly 9,000 in HCMC. MOLISA does notclassify street children into subcategories.
UNICEF defines street children as children under 18 years old who
spend most of their time on the street. UNICEF also presents three subcategories of street children: street living children, street working children, and thechildren of street living families. Street living children are those who have lost
ties with their families and live alone on the street. Street working children arethose who spend all or most of their time working on the street to earn income
for their families or for themselves (they have a home to return to and do not

3

MOLISA’s categorization of disadvantaged children includes (1) orphans and abandoned children;(2) disabled children; (3) chemical- or toxic-affected victims; (4) HIV/AIDS-affected children; (5)working children in hard, toxic or risky conditions; (6) working children who live far away fromtheir family; (7) street children; (8) sexually abused children; (9) drug-addicted children; and (10)law violators.

16

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

usually sleep on the street). The children of street living families are those wholive with their families on the street.
The definitions and categorization of the Terre des hommes Foundation are similar to those of UNICEF. For this reason, the studies of street children by UNICEF and Terre des hommes should be compatible if proper care is
exercised. In its survey conducted in 2000, Terre des hommes Foundation(2004) defines street children as “children under 18 years of age, earningmoney through casual, street-based activities such as begging, scavenging, peddling, portering, shoe shining, pick-pocketing, petty theft” and who belong to
any one of the following categories (Table 1).
In this paper, we basically adopt the definition of the Terre deshommes with slight modification as follows: street children are children under
18 years of age who regularly earn money through casual, street-based activities.
2.2. Difficulties in collecting data
Even if all organizations agreed on one common definition and categorization of street children, which is not the case, data collection would not beeasy due to the invisibility, mobility, and seasonality of street children.
Invisibility of street children is one of the major difficulties for conducting survey studies. Some child workers are highly visible to any observer:
shoe shiners, barrow-pushers, beggars, and vendors of all kinds including trinkets, T-shirts, tourist guide books, chewing gum, and lottery tickets and results.
Others are much less visible: those who offer drugs or sexual services and those
who only work at night. In Cau Muoi Market in HCMC, for example, there aregroups of vegetable scavengers who usually work from midnight to 2:00 a.m.
and again from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. They sleep during the day. If a street children survey is conducted during the day time, these children are likely to beomitted (Terre des hommes Foundation, 2004).
Many street children move from one location to another in search ofcustomers. Some are willing to go anywhere to find an earning opportunity.
Their high mobility creates obvious problems for those who want to countthem. Some children also shift from one job to another.
Moreover, street activities are often seasonal. A survey carried out in

17

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohnosummer will give different results from those of a winter survey. The Tet holidays, the Vietnamese New Year, also greatly influences the ebb and flow ofstreet children.
According to Dr. Tran Trong Khue of the Institute of Social Sciencesin Ho Chi Minh City (ISSHO) and Dr. Nguyen Thi Thanh Minh of the Committee of Population, Family and Children (CPFC) in HCMC, the average numberof street children in HCMC in 2003 was around 8,000. However, this number
fluctuated significantly during the year. The number of street children is always
highest during the summer when children do not have to go to school. The children of poor rural families often take advantage of this spare time to earn extra
money for their families. They leave home for urban streets and engage invending or scavenging. The income that such a child brings home may be as
much as ten times what his or her parents earn monthly doing rural jobs4. Inother words, a child working this way in the summer months can make a sum
comparable to the family’s entire rural income for the year. Children are willingto trade off their summer vacation for the additional large income they may
gain. This is one clear economic explanation for the higher number of street
children in big cites in the summer.
Special events like National Independence Day and Seagames 22 (the22 South East Asia Games) also affect the number. In preparation for thesendevents, unwanted wanderers are rounded up and “institutionalized” in an effort
to beautify the cities. During this time, many street children disappear fromtheir normal locations5. Official campaigns like this leave street children withthe choice of cleaning up their act entirely or leaving the urban center—often
temporarily—for outer and less visible areas. If a survey does not account forthese factors, the results can easily be misunderstood.
To obtain a comprehensive view of the dynamics of street children,
surveys should ideally be conducted at different times in a year and at different

Information provided at the street children workshop conducted by VDF in HCMC in August
2004. Dr. Minh confirmed that a child from Duc Pho Commune in Quang Ngai Province, where
the average monthly income was about 100,000 VND, could earn as much as 300,000 VND per
month by selling lottery tickets in HCMC.
5
Captured street children in Hanoi are sent to Ba Vi and Dong Dau detention centers and those in
HCMC are often sent to the School for Teenagers No. 3 in Go Vap District
4

18

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

times of the day. This arrangement permits the researcher to gain detailed information on the movements of street children as well as on average trends. However, most surveys are not conducted this way due to limitations in time, funding, or human resources.

3. Comparing Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi:
Past and Present
Among the surveys on the street children in Vietnam, we have chosen
four surveys for comparison. Two were conducted in HCMC while the othertwo were conducted in Hanoi. Two describe the situations many years ago
while the other two are more recent. The four surveys are:(i) Terre des hommes Foundation, Children of the Dust in Ho Chi Minh City
(1992). The survey was conducted from January to June 1992.
(ii) Terre des hommes Foundation, A Study on Street Children in Ho Chi
Minh City (2004). The survey was conducted in 2000 and supplemented
by group discussions by service providers in 2002.
(iii) Nguyen Van Buom and Jonathan Caseley, Survey on the Situation ofStreet Children in Hanoi (March 1996). The survey was conducted in
November and December 1995.
(iv) A Survey on Street Children in Hanoi, conducted by VDF (unpublished).
The survey was conducted in June 2004.
3.1. Methodology
The four surveys above share a similar methodology. The only majordifferences among them are the locality and the size of surveys. In each case,information was gathered by a structured questionnaire followed by individualinterviews.
The first survey was conducted by the Terre des hommes Foundationin the first six months of 1992. Seven locations in HCMC were chosen: Ben
Nghe area (District 1), Ben Thanh Market area (District 1), Cau Mong, Cau
Muoi Market area (District 1), Cho Lon area (District 5), Sai Gon Railway Station (District 3), Western Bus Station area (Binh Chanh District), and Van
Thanh Bus Station (Binh Thanh District). In each area, the sample for interview

19Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

was chosen randomly. The gender ratio was chosen to be close to the actual
ratio of boys and girls on the street. Interviews were conducted by three project
officers and volunteers using a questionnaire.
The other Terre des hommes study was conducted in 2000 with elaborate real-time review and adjustments. The research locations included Cau
Muoi Market and Cau Mong area, Pham Ngu Lao area, Ben Nghe area, Van
Thanh area, Saigon Railway Station area, Cho Lon area, Western Bus Stationarea, and Ben Thanh Market area. Survey conductors spent eleven days in eacharea. They initially examined the general profile of the street child community
in that area with a view to defining a representative group for individual interviews. Then they pre-tested the structured interview in the field. Following that,a workshop by survey conductors was held to revise the technique. It reviewed
the appropriateness of the categorization of street children; the definition andselection of representative groups; and the methods of conducting individualinterviews with the children, collecting data, and writing reports. As a result of
this review, the questionnaire and interview techniques were modified. Continual support from the Terre des hommes survey coordinator and regular wholegroup meetings further facilitated real-time process review.
The survey by Nguyen and Caseley was carried out in 1995 in foururban districts of Hanoi (Hai Ba Trung, Hoan Kiem, Dong Da, and Ba Dinh)
and in one rural district of Hanoi (Gia Lam). The survey instrument was a twopart questionnaire completed through two separate meetings with each child.
Meetings of all research teams were held weekly to discuss the progress of thesurvey and to solve any problems each team might have encountered.
The most recent survey was conducted by VDF in June 2004 in fourmain districts of Hanoi: Hoan Kiem, Hai Ba Trung, Thanh Xuan, and Tay Ho.
The survey instrument was a questionnaire. The interviews were conducted byfour people, who included one VDF researcher and three social workers of theYouth Volunteer Club of the Student Magazine of Vietnam.
Below, we highlight differences between the two cities and shifting
trends over time based on these four surveys. Since their sample sizes and survey locations differ, the results are not perfectly comparable and care should be
exercised in interpreting the results. Nevertheless, broad pictures should still bevalid.

20

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

3.2. Trends in number
The annual statistical report of MOLISA indicates that the total number of street children in Vietnam increased significantly in recent years. In 1997
there were 13,377 street children. The number rose to 19,047 in 1998 and to
21,016 in 2001. This suggests that the number of new children on the street ishigher than the number of children who quit street life and those who are nolonger counted as street children because they have grown older. The annual
statistical report of MOLISA also shows that street children are concentrated in
the two urban centers of Hanoi and HCMC. The number of street children isincreasing in both cities although special events like Seagames 22 temporarily
decrease their number.
Figure 1 reports the number of street children in HCMC at irregularintervals as reported by the Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs(DOLISA) in HCMC. The increasing trend is consistent with the national data
up to 2001, but there was a sudden and significant drop immediately after
Seagames 22 and the passage of the new Law on Child Care, Protection and
Education by the National Assembly. Whether this reduction is permanent or
temporary remains to be seen.
Although it is noted by government officials that the number of street
children in Hanoi fell after the program of sending street children back to theirhometown was introduced in 2003, the essence of the problem may remain.
According to interviews conducted by VDF in 2004, the current number ofstreet children in Hanoi in comparison with that in past years may not havedecreased significantly, although the street children may be more scattered andless visible. Some argue that the problem of street children cannot be solved
unless its root causes, such as rural poverty, are properly dealt with.
Recently, from our observation, the number of street children in thetwo big cities, Hanoi and HCMC, has decreased. In some locations like Hoan
Kiem lake in Hanoi and Ben Thanh Market area in HCMC, which used to be
crowded with street children, there is nearly no sight of wandering children,
shoe-shiners, or newspaper sellers. Two reasons can be mentioned. The first is astrictly implemented local government program of collecting street children andwandering people. The second may be the achievements of projects to assist
street children.

21

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

In 2005, 5,770 street children received help and support from local
authorities with school fees, vocational training, and job introduction. About
2,000 street children had been supported to reunite with their families and nearly 1,900 street children had been back to school. The number of street children
in the whole country, especially in Hanoi and HCMC, declined significantly
from 9,400 to 7,700 as of late 2005 (Thong tan xa Vietnam, 2006).
In August 2004, MOLISA cooperated with the European Delegation
to implement the first phase 6 of the Assistance for Street Children Project in 10
cities and provinces7. The project aims to help six groups of beneficiaries: (i)children currently living and working on the streets; (ii) street children who
have been resettled but who remain at risk of going back to streets; (iii) children
at risk of leaving home and migrating to the cities; (iv) families of resettled
street children and families of children at risk; (v) communes/wards with highnumbers of children having left home and migrated to the city; and (vi) relatedorganizations/institutions involved in the project activities.
Although the total numbers of supported street children and resettled
The second phase will be implemented in Da Nang and another province and in some districts of
Quang Nam, Dong Thap, Long An, and An Giang.
7
Hanoi, HCMC, Nha Trang, Thanh Hoa, Phu Yen, Quang Ngai, Thua Thien Hue, Hung Yen, Vinh
Phuc, and Ha Tinh.
622Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

street children have not been collected fully, it is obvious that the project hascontributed to decreasing the number of children on the streets. For example,
according to the DOLISA of Thanh Hoa province, up to August 2006, thanks tothe project, 321 out of 500 street children of Thanh Hoa (64 percent) had resettled with their families, and 1,000 children at risk had been prevented frombecoming street children. According to Hoang Hoa commune, in Hoang Hoa
commune, Vinh Phuc province, 86 street children of the commune had returned
and lived with their families after receiving support in the form of school fees,
vocational training, and capital lending. The few street children who remain in
Hoang Hoa are predicted to return to their families in the near future.
If this project is successful, by August 2007, there will have been
5,000 street children reached by specialized social workers providing individual
counseling services; 1,500 sustainably reunited with their families; 3,000 reaching National Education Standards for their age group; 2,600 gaining access tohealth care; 760 undertaking vocational education; and 250 provided with alternative care through kinship and foster family arrangements.
3.3 Where are they from?
It is well known that the vast majority of street children seen in big
cities are from rural areas, not from the cities themselves. But if we look closely, there are some differences and trends in the characteristics of street children
in HCMC and Hanoi.
According to the survey in 1992, 49.5 percent of the street children in
HCMC came from the Mekong Delta and South Central provinces. Together
with children from HCMC itself and its vicinity, a vast majority (86 percent)were from the southern half of the country. At that time, northern children andnorth central children were relatively few (7 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively) (Figure 2).
By 2000, the hometowns of street children in HCMC were a little
more widely spread, although 74 percent still came from the southern half ofthe country. Categorizing street children provides more detailed information.
More than 70 percent of children in categories A, B and C (see Table 1 above)came from the south and south central parts of the country while more than 60
percent of children in category D (economic motive) came from the north and23

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

north central parts. This indicates that, in recent years, most of the northernchildren in HCMC moved there as migrant workers. Category D children havedifferent attitudes and behavior from the other types because their lives and jobs
are more “stable” even though their earnings are generally low (Figure 3).
In the survey conducted by Buom and Caseley in Hanoi in 1995, the24Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

largest number of interviewed children came from Thanh Hoa province (27 percent). Children from Hai Hung (now split to Hai Duong and Hung Yen) ranked
second (21 percent). Children from Hanoi itself (17 percent) and Ha Nam (14percent) followed (Figure 4).
Similarly with HCMC, the hometowns of street children in Hanoi
shifted somewhat and become more diversified after nine years. The latest distribution of hometowns is shown in Figure 5.
These two surveys confirm what is well known among those working
with street children in Hanoi: the majority of working children come from rural

25

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

areas and, among them, Thanh Hoa sends the largest number8. Even in 2004,
the survey could not detect any street children whose native land was in thesouth of the country9.
On the contrary, HCMC as the economic hub of Vietnam attracts far
more economic migrant workers than Hanoi. There are even some Hanoian andCambodian children working in the streets of HCMC (0.6 percent each), while
in Hanoi we observe no street children from HCMC or foreign countries.
3.4. What do they do?
Generally speaking, jobs that street children undertake most frequently include scavenging, shoe shining, street vending, begging, selling lottery
tickets or lottery results, pick-pocketing, and pilfering in the market (in thisstudy we also include illegal activities as “jobs”). Here again, however, we seesome differences and trends according to gender, age, location, and survey
years.
The most popular jobs for boys are shoe shining, selling lottery tickets, pick-pocketing, and market portering. Meanwhile, girls often engage inselling lottery tickets and street vending. Small children often start with begging
and waste scavenging because they are too young to do physically demanding
work like portering. Older children like to work as street vendors after they gain
certain street life experience. Many of them do more than two jobs at the sametime.
The next two diagrams show the occupational distribution of street
children in HCMC in 1992 and 2000.
There is a current boom in the selling lottery tickets and shoe shining
in HCMC, neither of which existed in the 1992 survey. On the other hand, there
has been a significant decrease in begging since that time.
The most common jobs among street boys in Hanoi are shoe shining
Thanh Hoa is a poor coastal province south of Hanoi. It is traditional for Thanh Hoa people toleave their hometown for big cities to make a living. Three villages (Quang Hai, Quang Thai, andQuang Loi) are particularly well known as the homes of many migrants to Hanoi as well as to
HCMC.
9In the southern provinces, if a child has to leave home for urban working life, he or she always
goes to HCMC because this city is nearer, transportation is more convenient, and there is a mindset
among rural people to favor HCMC over all other cities.
826

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

27

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

and lottery result sales. Scavenging and street vending are jobs that girls often
do. The survey in 1992 identified the top five jobs for working children, namely, begging (9 percent), scavenging (14 percent), street vending (23 percent),
shoe shining (29 percent), and hand labor (20 percent).
The two recent surveys in Hanoi, the one conducted in 2003 (Committee of Population, Family and Children 2003a, 2003b) and the other conducted by VDF in 2004, also confirm that these occupations are the most popular ones.
3.5. A note on lottery tickets
Although the occupations of street children in HCMC and Hanoi
mostly overlap, some jobs undertaken by HCMC children are rarely seen in
Hanoi, and vice versa. One example is seen in lottery business.
In HCMC, selling lottery tickets is a very popular job for children of
every age. The lottery ticket sales system is more “developed” in HCMC with alarge number of lottery agents organizing child sellers. The adult sales agentsreceive lottery tickets from the state-owned lottery company and redistributethem to children. The adult agents bear the business risk and refund children for
the unsold portion of lottery tickets at the end of the day. These organizers
sometimes provide children with food and sleeping quarters. All profits fromselling the lottery tickets belong to the children.
In Hanoi, lottery tickets are sold by small-scale adult agents along thestreets. No child is involved as there is no organization to mobilize street children to sell lottery tickets. However, the announcement of lottery ticket results
is more “exciting” than it is in HCMC. Every day from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.,hundreds of children gather at the lottery result centers in Tang Bat Ho Street
and Hue Street. They record the results, carbon copy them, and run as fast as
they can to every lane and corner of Hanoi to sell them. While each result sheet
costs only 500 VND, a child with quick feet can earn 10,000 VND per day on
average. In HCMC no child sells lottery ticket results since the results are provided free of charge by any lottery agent right after the results are announced.

28

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

4. New Typology Based on Causes and Situations
While the existing classifications of street children, such as the one
proposed by the Terre des hommes Foundation (Table 1), are operationally useful in conducting surveys, we need a more structured classification for further
analysis. In this section we propose a new typology of street children based on
the distinction between causes and situations, and the relationship between
them. In considering the situations, it is necessary to separately discuss current
deprivation (poverty, health problems, emotional crisis, and so on) and the lackof future investment (education, training, job prospects, and so on).
4.1. Causes
The causes driving school-age children to the street can be divided
into three main groups which we shall call broken family, mindset problem, andeconomic migration. While these causes are mutually related and overlapping, amain cause can usually be identified for each street child. It is necessary toclearly distinguish them for deeper analysis and proper design of intervention,
as we will see below.
Group I: Broken family
This group includes children with extremely difficult family situations such as being orphaned or abandoned as a result of the death, divorce, or
separation of the parents; being a victim of domestic violence or sexual abuse;and the like. This is the traditional cause of street children that exists in any
developing country with or without economic growth.
The increasing rate of divorce, of which children are always the first
victims, is a pressing issue in Vietnamese society. The disintegration of thefamily is a great shock to them even if one of the parents continues to take careof them. Children abandoned as a result of parents’ divorce have to undergo aneven greater emotional shock than do those who remain with one parent. Being
left with relatives or grandparents, such children are easily discouraged fromstudy and lured by bad friends. Psychological damage is particularly severe
when a child loses one or both of the parents when it is very young.
There are approximately 120,000 abandoned children in the country.
Another estimate says that 3.4 percent of abandoned children are street chil-29

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

dren. This means that more than 4,000 abandoned children are roaming in thestreet10. From another angle, the recent survey of the Committee of Population,
Family and Children in Hanoi (2004) discovered that 12.3 percent of the interviewed children were from a broken family.
Domestic violence is a controversial topic that attracts much attention. There are a variety of definitions and opinions concerning domestic violence. Outdated feudal ideas still permeate relationships between husband andwife as well as between parents and children. Feudal ideology remains relatively strong among rural people. In such cases, family quarrels are common. The
majority, both women and men, agree that if the wife does something wrong,
the husband has the right to slap her. They believe that, by doing so, the husband is fulfilling his role as the head of the family and as a man.
Domestic violence takes many forms from physical violence such as
beating to psychological violence such as scolding, threatening, and making
quarrels. Many children leave home because they cannot bear the domestic violence inflicted on them. The most common situations include being beaten by a
drunk father or being scolded very severely when a child has done something
wrong.
Most of the street children who have left home because of domestic
violence are spiritually and emotionally impaired. While in-depth scientificresearch on the effects of domestic violence on the psychology of street children is lacking, this cause is mentioned in every survey on street children.
Group II: Mindset problem
This is a case where the family enjoys relatively unbroken relations
and an average—or at least not destitute—standard of living but still sends children to work in the street due to the wrong attitudes of the parents or of the children themselves.
Some children leave home because they are lured by friends or
because they want to savor freedom instead of going to school. Seemingly
exciting life in big cities and friends who already know the street life are the10
According to MOLISA’s data for 2001 as quoted in Committee of Population, Family andChildren in Hanoi (2004).

30

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

pulling force. For such children, earning money is not the main purpose. Naturally, they easily succumb to social evils like heroin, prostitution, and juvenile
delinquency.
However, the mindset problem most often arises on the parent side.
Some parents think that cash income is more important than children’s education. The temptation of luxurious life breeds and reinforces the wrong attitudeof the parents. By preventing their children from going to school and forcing
them to work hard for the family, they become a negative constraint on the children’s development. It is observed that some parents trade their children’s
future for nice furniture, electronic appliances, or a new house. Unfortunately,
there seems to be a positive correlation between rapid economic growth and thewrong attitude of adults. When the living standard improves day by day, thistype of street children tends to increase.
Group III: Economic migration
Children who are forced by dire poverty to migrate to urban areas toearn a living belong to this group. Here, the main cause of migration is economic. The important feature of this group is that the parents do not want their sonsor daughters to drop out of school and take to the street, but they feel there is noother choice given their economic situation. The children themselves often wantto continue schooling as well. What is important in identifying this group is notwhether the child has both parents or has only one parent, but whether or not afamily bond and consideration for children’s future exist. With proper love,even children raised by only one parent or grandparents will retain the right attitude towards education.
There is no doubt that family poverty is one of the major causes ofstreet children. Due to family poverty, children cannot study and play, lose thecare or protection of a guardian, and have to work long hours in unfriendly
places. In every survey discussed in Section 3 above, more than 70 percent of
the street children answered that they were working in the street because of
their family poverty.
Poverty may be the result of a natural disaster, the death or desertionof a bread earner, job loss, illness, injury, divorce, separation, the death of livestock, crop failure, theft, increase in dependents, and so on. Some of these overlap with the problem of broken family discussed above while others are beyond

31Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

the control of the household. When they occur, poverty and hunger become
inevitable.
4.2. Situations
Each street child is different. Apart from the initial cause that drives
the child out onto the street, their life and working styles vary greatly. It is
important to clearly distinguish their situations because their needs and required
assistance also vary greatly with their situations. This paper proposes to divide
the situations that street children face into two dimensions, namely, the degrees
of current protection and investment for future. For all deprived people, current
protection is of utmost concern for the respect for human dignity and ensuring
the minimum standard of life. But for children, investment in their future isequally—or even more—crucial.
Current protection
Current protection refers to whether or not the child is protected physically and mentally against various risks now so that his or her daily life is notexcessively miserable or threatened. This further breaks down into several contributing factors such as:
1. Physical health (injury, sickness, malnutrition, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS,
physical disability, etc.)
2. Mental health (fear, lack of love, trauma, lack of concentration or discipline, mental disability, etc.)
3. Assault risk (bullied, beaten, tortured, raped, detained, sold, etc.)
4. Job hazard (engaged in an “at risk” job—see Table 1)
5. Financial shocks (family needs medicine, being cheated, money is stolen,
fined by police, etc.)
6. Shelter (sleep under a roof or outside)
7. Adult protection and guidance (parent, guardian, NGO, etc.)
8. Group protection (work and live in group or alone)
The first two factors (1, 2) describe the present condition of the childwhile the next three (3, 4, 5) measure the degree of uncontrollable risk to which
he or she is subjected. The remaining three factors (6, 7, and 8) help the child to
avoid potential problems or deal effectively with the problems that have arisen.
While these factors may improve or deteriorate simultaneously, they are in prin-32

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

ciple separate and can take different values for each child. We can say that thechild is well protected against imminent risks if these factors are all favorable,
and we can make the converse conclusion if they are poor in every direction11.
Future investment
Another key element in gauging the welfare of children is whether
they are receiving adequate education or training in preparation for the future.
Without investment in human capital, children cannot expect any bright futureor realize any dream, even if they are well fed and protected today. Naturally,
therefore, the degree of future investment should be the second dimension in
defining their situation. With adequate knowledge and skill, children will havea much greater chance of escaping their current misery through finding a stable
and safer job. At the same time, this prospect gives them hope, encouragement,
and a new meaning to their tough life at present.
More specifically, future investment can take several forms. If thechild has been out of school for a few years or less, returning to formal schooling should be seriously considered. The child should study at least up to the 12th
grade and should be given a chance to go to a university if warranted. If thisoption is not feasible, private tutoring by volunteer teachers and classes offered
by NGOs may substitute. For those who have been out of school for a long timeand no longer have the aptitude to study for many years, vocational training of
shorter duration should be provided. Among general skills, English and computers are very popular among aspiring street children. But they should be combined with more specific vocational training that fits the characteristics of eachchild. Equally important but frequently neglected is the need to link vocational
training to actual jobs. Guidance and assistance in job search are crucial indetermining whether learned skills are used productively or wasted.
Some factors may impede the child’s investment for the future. The
first and perhaps the most common is the financial factor. Most classes andtraining programs require a fee. If the fee is out of reach of the child, he or she

11

The Terre des homes Foundation uses some of these situational factors (job hazard, shelter, adultprotection) along with what we call causes (broken family, street family [mindset problem], economic migration), in its classification of street children in Table 1 above. In this paper, we preferto treat causes and situations differently.

33

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

is not able to attend.
The second is the time constraint. Even if a course is offered for free,
the child still faces a tradeoff between work and knowledge because of theopportunity cost related to time. If the child goes to school, he or she will earn
less on the street. Similarly, if the course takes a long time, in terms of hours
per day or duration in months or years, the child is less likely to choose toattend—unless sufficient compensation is offered to cover the lost working
time. In this sense, financial and time constraints are related.
Third, many street children simply lack the discipline and patience needed to attend a course. The longer they have been on the street, the more this is so.
Fourth, another important factor is the encouragement (or lack of it)from the community surrounding the child. If the child’s friends begin to attend
a class, he or she is more likely to attend it too. Among fellow street children,the contagion effect is usually very powerful. Similarly, the child will attend
classes more regularly if he or she receives constant encouragement from parents or adult acquaintances. On the contrary, however, if the parents actively
discourage the child from studying, an obedient child may easily follow thisadvice. The objection of an unwilling parent is one of the biggest obstacles insending street children to school or a training program.
4.3. Correlation and dynamism between causes and situations
Typical situations and aspirations
While all street children face the risky situations of street life, thekind and degree of risks they have to cope with differ significantly dependingon the initial cause of becoming street children.
Children from a broken family (Group I in Figure 9) are the least protected against current risks and the most lacking in investment opportunities.
Their life situation is often much tougher than street children of other groups.
The risks of drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, assault, abuse, sexual exploitation, andother serious troubles are much higher with this group even if they try to protect
themselves by roaming and sleeping together (risks are even higher if they arealone). Similarly—and regrettably—the risk of becoming a promoter of social
evil rather than its victim is also high. These children are rarely seen to be goingto school or receiving vocational training on their own. With a prolonged rough34

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

Mindset
ProblemEconomic
Migration
BrokenFamilylife, they become streetwise and often lose the discipline and patience required
to keep regular time and study hard. They are stuck in a difficult position (asillustrated by their location in the lower left corner of Figure 9) and can hardly
escape the situation without proper and dedicated intervention.
Children who drop out of school due to the wrong attitude of the parents (Group II) are less deprived, relatively speaking, in the current situation
than the children in the first group since their parents can look after them. They
are relatively well fed and protected. It is rare to see them severely victimized
by street gangs, or even joining such gangs. The biggest problem with thisgroup, however, is the strong opposition of the parents when someone (teacher,social worker, or the children themselves) proposes an education or training
program for them. Migrating families work hard to move up from the lower left
corner to the upper left corner of the diagram, but they do not invest in the children’s future12.

One NGO assisting street children in Hanoi reports the case of a boy whose parents forbid him to
go to school. Driven by the love of learning, he ran away from home to work and study in Hanoi.

1235

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Children who migrate for economic reasons (Group III) face least difficulty in comparison with the other two groups, provided that their family ties
are basically intact and children retain the right attitude and a strong desire forstudying and improving life. Their main or only reason for joining the street life
is economic. They often have close contacts with people from the native village
and rent a room with previous neighbors. Collective protection provides themwith an adequate risk-sharing mechanism against the contingencies of fallingill, running out of money, and the like. Moreover, they are often very eager toreturn to school or learn useful skills for the future if the opportunity arises;some actually go to school by their own. Their parents normally support their
aspiration. Children in this group are equipped with the right attitude and incentive to move not only vertically (upward) but also horizontally (rightward) in
Figure 9.
If each street child is given a score between 1 and 10 in both thedegree of current protection and of future investment, his or her situation may
be identified with a location in this diagram. Contributing factors to current protection include physical and mental health, assault risk, job security, financial
situation, shelter, adult protection, and group protection, as explained above.
Contributing factors to future investment include the status of schooling, training, access to job information, and proper guidance and counseling by professionals. By giving these scores to street children, it is possible to quantify theirplight, identify the group to which they belong, and devise the way to guidethem towards the right paths.
However, such measurement also has limitations especially withrespect to comparison and aggregation. Two variables may not be able to capture the complexity of the situation each child faces. For example, even if twochildren score the same in current protection, the first child may have good
health but little parental protection, and the second child may have the converse
situation. Having the same score does not mean that they suffer from the sameproblem or need the same intervention. This warning also applies to the scoringin future investment. Additionally, it is difficult to decide how much weight
each factor should receive in constructing such a score. Are job security andshelter equally important? Should formal schooling be given more points than
vocational training? Or should all factors receive one point each? This conun-

36

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

drum defies an easy solution. Any scoring system must therefore resort to sometentative convention.
Even so, giving numerical scores to the situation of each street child
may be a good first step towards an objective quantification of his or her plight,
supplementing narrative description.
Setbacks
While Group I children are stuck at the lower left corner of Figure 9,
Group II children (with their parents) attempt to climb upward, and Group III
children want to move closer to the bliss point in the upper right corner where
current protection and future investment are both available. But these movements are frequently interrupted by uncontrollable negative shocks that tend topull the children back to where they started, or worse. These setbacks are indicated in dashed arrows in Figure 9.
Accidental setbacks occur at two levels: individual shocks and macro(or societal) shocks. Shocks that befall the child or the child’s family partly
overlap with those that initially sent them to the street. They include family
problems, financial hardship, sickness, injury, assaults, psychological crisis,
drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and arrest and detention. By contrast, macro shocks
affect a broad segment of the society but hit vulnerable groups (including street
children) particularly harshly—for example, natural disasters, economic recession, fluctuation in tourism, bird flu and other epidemics, international events
that require clean streets, and seasonal business fluctuations. While all street
children must cope with both shocks, different groups are impacted differently.
These shocks have immediate and heavily negative influences onGroup I children, who are already in the worst situation. This is because theylack the knowledge to avoid such shocks as well as the risk-sharing mechanism to ameliorate the shocks once they occur. As a consequence, they are
more vulnerable to sickness, injury, financial hardship, and so forth, and more
susceptible to the temptation of social evils. They are caught in a hopelesstrap.
Children in Groups II and III are better off in the sense that they havemore protection and guidance from the parent or the group to which they
belong. But such protection and guidance are neither perfect nor available for37

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

all contingencies. If the shock becomes uncontrollable for the child (or his or
her friends or parents), there will be a slippage towards either downward or leftward, or both. The child may become hungry or sick, and may even quit studying. In the worst case, the child may lose the family or group protection andmigrate to Group I.

5. Former Street Children: Where are They Now?
5.1. Case studies
No survey has systematically tracked the same children over theyears. The number of street children is reported every year and many surveys
are conducted to describe the situation at any one point in time, but no study
seriously asks the questions of what happens to today’s street children when
they grow older, whether surveyed children are the same individuals examinedin previous surveys, or how many of the children of former street children
become a new generation of street children. This paper shares the same weakness as other studies13. However, we hope to provide some anecdotal evidence
on the long-term aspect of the street children problem so that the reader cansense the breadth of the problem. The information below was acquired throughpersonal contacts that the authors have had in Hanoi and HCMC since the mid1990s.
Paths traveled by street children to adulthood vary greatly from one
child to another. Some youths graduate from the status of precarious hand-tomouth living to a respectable career in the formal sector. This is achieved
through self-effort, good luck, and assistance from people who recognize theirlatent talent. On the other hand, it is hardly deniable that some unfortunate adolescents fall deeper and deeper into trouble until they destroy themselves or
become menaces to society. The majority of street children, however, seem to

13

One way to track the growth of children consistently is to analyze the records kept by sheltersthat house former street children until they reach the age of 17 or even above. Many domestic
and foreign organizations provide such assistance in Vietnam. However, such data may sufferfrom a winner’s bias because only the relatively successful children are admitted to shelters.
There are also many children these shelters do not accept because their conditions are too difficult to manage and their admission would have an undesirable effect on other children.

38

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

grow into street adults without meeting a brilliant success or a dreadful end.
Lacking education and a stable job, they continue to work in the street, manage
to make a living, get married, and raise a family while coping with the samerisk and uncertainty of street life they have known for a long time. Whether thechildren of such street adults will also become street children is an important
determining factor of the street children problem in the future. Many street
adults genuinely desire to send their children to school and terminate the generational vicious circle, but whether they can do so depends mainly on their financial situation.
As expected from the discussion in Section 4, Group I children havethe least chance to move up in the long run. In contrast, it is not uncommon to
see Group III children achieve academic and professional success. The
prospects of Group II children lie between these two cases. Below, six actual
cases are presented for illustration. Each case is classified into one of the threegroups based on the most important cause for street life. As noted earlier, however, the three causes overlap and interact with each other. The classification
here should be taken as only indicative. The age shown below is according to
the western calendar as of the end of 2004.
Miss A—Group I (broken family), age 19
The father of Miss A was a landless farmer in Hung Yen. He married
three wives consecutively. Miss A and her elder brother are the children of histhird wife. Miss A also had one younger brother but he was “stolen” in his
infancy and she says that is why her mother became a little crazy. Miss A has
one living half-sister whom she met only once. When Miss A was very young,the family traveled extensively in Vietnam to beg in locations including
HCMC, Hue and Hai Phong. In the past, the poor often traveled for free bytrain. But she does not remember much about these days.
In 1995, when Miss A was ten years old, the family “settled down” inHanoi. They slept outside the Big Church and continued to beg. The municipal
cleaning workers sometimes invited them to take shelter in their make-shifthouse while they were at work. A foreign priest helped Miss A to go to school
up to the sixth grade. Her parents were often caught by police and detained. At
one time, she was sent to live with an unmarried young couple. The lady there
forced her to sell postcards near Hoan Kiem Lake and to inhale an illegal drug.

39

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Since then, Miss A has been addicted to heroin.
The family subsequently moved to a humble shack in an area ofHanoi inhabited by migrants from outer provinces. Miss A continued to sell inthe street, her mother collected waste, and her elder brother was a shoe shiner aswell as a thief. Many individuals and NGOs tried to help her without much success. Recently, the father’s health deteriorated significantly during his four-year
detention at Ba Vi, a detention center. Miss A struggled to obtain the necessary
official documents and stamps to get him out.
In early 2004, her father was released from Ba Vi for the reason ofterminal weakness. After he passed away and her mother and brother wereagain caught by the police and sent to Ba Vi, Miss A became homeless. She
began to sleep alone outside, wear tattered clothes, and eat the leftover food ofothers. She fell and injured herself and could no longer go to Hoan Kiem Laketo earn money. She admits that she still can earn money to buy heroin by selling
drugs herself. Although she sometimes tries hard to escape from her fate, difficult circumstances and deep psychological wounds have made her distrustful ofothers. Her stubbornness as well as the lack of future investment makes it
extremely difficult for anyone to help her.
Miss B—Group II (economic migration), age 25
When Miss B was eight years old, her parents were divorced and she
and her younger sister were sent to live with their grandmother. Miss B went toschool in the morning and worked as a baby sitter and house maid in the afternoon. Although she was a very good student and a monitor at school, she had todrop out at the fifth grade because her family was too poor to pay the schoolfee. Two months later, she left the village for Hanoi with 50,000 VND in her
pocket. She has been working in Hanoi for the twelve years since that time.
At first, she bought miscellaneous things in Dong Xuan Market andsold them in the streets. Two years later, she began to study English and simultaneously go to Nguyen Van To school with the help of one foreigner. Whilecontinuing to sell in the street, Miss B attended evening classes. To savemoney, she spent only 1,000 dong on bread for her daily food.
After shifting from one job to another, Miss B became a receptionist
at a mini hotel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. She was very quick to learn newwork and gain experience. Her English was better than that of any other street

40

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

children. Recognizing her potential, another foreigner offered to be a business
partner to open a mini hotel of her own. It met with immediate success. Currently, Miss B is a manager of two mini hotels, both of which are profitable.
Miss B was an economic migrant who did not want to quit school to
become a street child in the first place. Although her parents were divorced, she
had the spiritual support of her mother and grandmother. She also had an insatiable desire and determination to become an entrepreneur. External financial
support was the only thing she needed to realize her dream.
Miss C—Group III (mindset problem), age 18
Miss C and her mother are from a village in Tien Giang, but they usually stay in a rented room in HCMC and sell coconuts in the heart of the city.
Miss C has no father but has one brother who is also a coconut seller. She cannot say clearly when she dropped out of school. The mother and the daughter
sell chilled coconuts together from early morning to late night or until all merchandise is sold. Sales are better on hot days and they rest on rainy days. Carrying dozens of coconuts, with loads weighing up to 30 kilograms, is a tough job
for a young girl. Like other sellers, Miss C is very good at running from thepolice.
Initially, Miss C spoke only Vietnamese with strong a southern accent.
Her writing was poor. But soon she picked up fragments of various languages,
including English, German, and Japanese, from foreigners. She likes to throw
dirty words at them. Some foreigners like to take her and her friends on a day
trip to Mekong. On major holidays like Tet or when major events are held in
HCMC, they return to Tien Giang to rest. Their house is simple and decent, andhas a TV and a video machine. Miss C hopes to get married with a German boy.
A local NGO in HCMC has tried to send her to an informal English
class. A modest financial sum was introduced to compensate for the lost sales
because her mother was unsure of the benefit of letting Miss C receive education. Many of her seller friends studied hard and subsequently received assistance in job training and placement, but Miss C skipped classes frequently andfinally dropped out. After Seagames 22, it became increasingly difficult to sellin the central districts of HCMC and the NGO sometimes loses track of thefamily.

41

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohno

Mr. D—Group II (economic migration), age 26 if alive
The father of Mr. D passed away in 1990. Mr. D had no brother orsister. Leaving his mother in Ha Tay, he came to Hanoi in the early 1990s tosell postcards to foreign tourists. Although he had a few friends among the boy
sellers, he was basically alone in his work and life because he was the only one
from his village. He picked up English on the street and received modest assistance from foreigners to go to English courses. He also went to the driving
school but could not complete the lessons due to lack of money. He did notreceive any consistent training to get a stable job, so he continued to sell postcards. He was caught by the police and sent to the detention center a few times.
In 1999 he married a seller girl whom he knew for a long time, but hislife remained as hard as before. He was addicted to heroin and gradually lost his
weight and health. Two years ago, his friends reported his death. The cause waspneumonia related to his drug addiction.
Mrs. E—Group II (economic migration), age 23
In the mid-1990s, Mrs. E came from a village to sell postcards to foreigners in the Hoan Kiem Lake area and send money monthly to her parents.
She has both of her parents and three siblings. Her family is poor but not desperately poor in the village. She dropped out of school after the fifth grade andnever returned to formal schooling. Because she was in a large group of young
female sellers from the same village, she sold and slept with them in a rented
room. She received foreigners’ help in going to English and sewing classes. Her
English improved, but she was not successful in finding a stable job.
As the police crackdown on street vendors intensified over the years,
she switched to T-shirt sales away from the Hoan Kiem Lake area. In 1999 she
married a boy from the village next to hers and had a baby in the following
year. Now Mrs. E and her husband sell T-shirts together on a motorbike all
around Hanoi. The couple is still poor but they are happy with each other. However, Mrs. E realizes that their occupation is too unstable with the possibility ofofficial arrest, and wants to find better jobs for herself and her husband. At
present, she is seeking financial help from others to send her husband to a driving school. She herself is thinking of opening a small shop but people aroundher warn that it is a risky move if the shop fails.
Mrs. E feels it unfair that honest sellers like her are often detained

42

Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

together with thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts and pushers, and other criminals.
These sellers are doing what is necessary to survive with no evil intention
towards society, she says. Another injustice she can hardly bear is the fact thatrich detainees are released quickly while poor people like her must do full timeat the detention center. But she knows that her protests are unlikely to be heard.
Mr. F—Group II (economic migration), age 22
Mr. F also came from the country side in a group to sell postcards inthe Hoan Kiem Lake area in 1998. His father died and his mother remarried, so
he and his younger sister were placed under the care of the grandparents.
Although his case may be classified as Group I (broken family), group protection and the existence of grandparents provided some initial security against
urban risks.
In his first few years of selling, Mr. F had no future plan; he did notknow what he wanted to learn or do. However, as street life became increasingly difficult due to the policy of cleaning up urban centers, he began to think
seriously about the next step. After studying travel guidebooks by himself, hebecame an unofficial tour guide for foreign backpackers. He also sought help
for getting a driver’s license (he received the money but sent it to his grandparents instead of going to the driving school).
Mr. F was caught by the police this summer. Because he tested positive for heroin, he is now being detained in one of the drug addiction centers in
Ba Vi. People like him can be locked up for as many as two years. Some saythat this is not too bad for him because he can be treated and has something to
eat there. But all agree that many former addicts start using heroin again upon
release. His sister, who married another seller recently, sometimes visits him in
Ba Vi.
5.2. How to guide street children towards the right paths?
The solution to the street children problem, which must be detailed
and realistic, needs to be discussed in full elsewhere. This section can merely
present some general suggestions that can be obtained directly from the above
analysis. Three mutually related points are given below.
First, a proper mix of current protection and future investment should
be available to each street child. A program to create appropriate conditions

43

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohnomust be designed and provided strategically and systematically for each street
child. This requires deep understanding and rich experience regarding the street
children problem. Assistance should not be casual or ad hoc.
Second, for every group of street children, proper external intervention
is required because it is very difficult for the child alone to overcome the barriers
to progress. Even in the relatively “easy” case of Group III (economic migrants)
with appropriate mindsets, like Miss B above, help from foreigners and fellow
Vietnamese were indispensable. For children in Groups I and II, external assistance is even more necessary for guiding them towards the right paths.
Third, for good intervention, analysis and planning based on an effective classification of street children is crucial. As mentioned earlier, street children are not homogeneous. Each child faces a different situation and requires
different help. Assistance must be consistent with the type and needs of children. Partial or unsuitable support will not only fail to achieve results but will
also waste the time and money of the supporters.
In this regard, Group I (broken family) is most difficult to assist. Children in this group generally lack the necessary attitude and discipline. Therefore, they require all-around, long-term and customized commitment, encouragement, and patience on the part of help providers for both current protection
and future investment, and for physical and mental assistance.
The main barrier for children in Group II (mindset problem) is theparent’s psychology. As this is difficult to change even with constant persuasion, a special tactic to provide children with an education opportunity is needed. This may require financial incentive for the parent or even temporary separation of the child from the parent. If the children themselves also have thewrong mindset, it is even more difficult to assist them.
Street children in Group III (economic migrants) need financial assistance. Unlike other groups, they are more often equipped with good motivationand family encouragement to overcome the poverty trap. For them, the main
assistance can be financial, supplemented by proper counseling and monitoring.
While they are the least difficult group to help, careful selection is extremely
important. Not all Group III children are honest or highly motivated, so the timeand money of the supporters should be allocated to the most serious candidates.

44Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

6. Concluding Remarks
The plight of street children in Vietnam is at an early stage in comparison with more “developed” neighboring countries. In Vietnam, mafia-like
crime groups of street children are relatively rare. Street children in Vietnam
produce a feeling of pity and sadness in the minds of the general public rather
than inspiring strong fear and repulsion. If there street children are involved insocial evils, we often consider them to be the victims of those evils rather thanconsidering them to be evil makers. We need to effectively tackle the street
children problem in Vietnam as soon as possible before it develops into a worse
situation.
Studying the interactions of old and new causes in a growing economy is just the starting point of research on street children. For simplicity, we did
not want to raise too many issues or questions in this paper, although we were
aware that the reality is far more complex. Before closing, we would like toleave a few suggestions for further study. Street children themselves and manysocial program coordinators agree that there are two important issues that must
be addressed seriously. First, there is a need to strengthen our skill in providing
counseling work to the children in guiding each child to the right path. Second,
after receiving certain education or training, children need additional help in
applying their acquired knowledge to the real situation. A training program or ashort course is not sufficient. They need more incentive and assistance to securea stable job and build a family—to live a normal life in society.

References

Committee of Population, Family and Children, Information Center. 2003a. Ket qua
khao sat tinh hinh tre em lang thang tai Ha Noi va thanh pho Ho Chi Minh (Resultsof the Street Children Surveys in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City). Hanoi: Committeeof Population, Family and Children, Information Center.
Committee of Population, Family and Children, Information Center. 2003b. Bao cao
khao sat tinh hinh tre em lang thang tai Ha Noi va thanh pho Ho Chi Minh (Resultsof the Street Children Surveys in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City). Hanoi: Committee

45

Duong Kim Hong and Kenichi Ohnoof Population, Family and Children, Information Center.
Committee of Population, Family and Children. 2004. Bao cao tinh hinh tre em langthang tren dia ban Ha Noi (Results of the Street Children Surveys in Hanoi and Ho
Chi Minh City). Hanoi: Committee of Population, Family and Children, Information Center.
Gallina, A.; and P., Masina. 2002. Street children in Vietnam: An inquiry into the rootsof poverty and survival livelihood strategies. Federico Caffè Centre Research
Report No. 3/2002 (A Report for ASIA URBS Project No. VNM 007, co-financedby the European Union), Department of Social Sciences, Roskilde University.
Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University.
General Statistics Office of Vietnam. 2000. Nien giam thong ke 1999 (Statistical Yearbook 1999). Hanoi: Statistical Publishing House.
General Statistics Office of Vietnam. 2005. Nien giam thong ke 2004 (Statistical Yearbook 2004). Hanoi: Statistical Publishing House.
National Assembly of Vietnam. 2004. Luat bao ve, cham soc va giao duc tre em (Child
Care, Protection and Education Law). Retrieved on 20 October, 2006 fromhttp://www.nfvc.org.vn/default.aspx?tabid=382&cateid=369&MainMenuID=5.
Nguyen, V. B; and J. Caseley. 1996. Survey on the Situation of Street Children in Hanoi.
Hanoi: Youth Research Institute.
Young Lives. 2003. Young Lives Preliminary Country Report: Vietnam. London:
Younglives.
Terre des hommes Foundation. 1992. Children of the Dust in Ho Chi Minh City. Geneva: Terre des hommes Foundation.
Terre des hommes Foundation. 2004. A Study on Street Children in Ho Chi Minh City.
Geneva: Terre des hommes Foundation.
Thong tan xa Vietnam (Vietnam News Agency). 2006. “Tiep tuc cac no luc ngan nguatinh trang tre lang thang.” (Continuing Efforts to Stop Street Children). Retrievedon 15 January, 2007 at
http://www.vnagency.com.vn/TrangChu/VN/tabid/58/itemid/148781/Default.aspx
Vietnam Development Forum. 2004. Dieu tra ve tre duong pho tai Ha Noi nam 2004
(The Survey on Street Children in Hanoi in 2004), Unpublished. Hanoi: Vietnam
Development Forum.
West, A. 2003. At the Margins: Street Children in Asia and the Pacific. Manila: AsianDevelopment Bank.

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Street Children in Vietnam: Interactions of Old and New Causes in a Growing Economy

Related Websites
http://www.chula.ac.th/INSTITUTE/ARCM/child5.htm
http://www.unicef.org/vietnam/street.htm
http://www.streetfriends.org/CONTENT/background/what_are_sc.html
http://www.vwam.com/vets/children/introduction.htm
http://www.worldbank.org/data/dataquery.html

47

Chapter 3
An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS
Protection for Sex Workers:
The Case of Quang Ninh Province
Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

Abstract
The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Vietnam will not be dealt with effectively without strong prevention methods. Controlling HIV via sexual transmission is one of the most pressing
requirements as sexual “services” are becoming more and more common in hotels, restaurants, and entertainment centers. A survey to assess the risk awareness of the workers ofthese establishments was conducted during the year 2005 in Quang Ninh province. Sex
workers and waitresses at high risk for prostitution answered 150 questionnaires; while 30
in-depth surveys were conducted with the participation of local authority officers (12 surveys) and owners of restaurants and hotels (18 surveys). The survey results reveal that sex
workers and people at high risk for prostitution are not well aware of methods to prevent
HIV/AIDS, and restaurant and hotel owners as well as local authority officers do not pay
enough attention to the transmission of the dangerous virus that causes AIDS. Their poorawareness of safe sex, especially condom use, is another finding. Psychological interventions, therefore, seem to be appropriate. Peer clubs, skill-training classes, and personalcounseling are crucial to change attitudes and create good habits and behaviors of safe
sex for sex workers. Based on that and on the generalized results of the in-depth survey,
the authors suggest an intervention model of HIV/AIDS transmission prevention to change
the attitudes, habits, and behavior of people at high risk for prostitution. Quang Ninh waschosen as the first pilot location because this province has the most serious HIV/AIDS
problem with the highest number of HIV/AIDS-infected people in the country.

1. Introduction
Since the early 1990s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has spread rapidly in
Vietnam. In December 1990, the first HIV case was recorded. The total numberof HIV infections in Vietnam, calculated up to 19 December 2005, was103,900. People at the highest risk of HIV infection are injection drug users andsex workers. In 1996, the rate of HIV infection among sex workers was only49

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

0.73 percent, but the rate increased to 6 percent in 2000. It should be noted thatstatistics are just the tip of the iceberg, because only one-third of the sex workers (16,801 files out of estimated 51,000 sex workers nationwide) are recognized. Therefore, the risk of HIV transmission through sex is very high andvery difficult to control.
Finding an appropriate prevention model for sex workers is thus necessary. However, this is a challenging task because almost all sex workers areworking as “waitresses” in restaurants, hotels, and entertainment centers. Meeting them to educate them on risk and prevention is very difficult, if not to say
nearly impossible, because no one admits to being a sex worker.
There have been a number of studies that focus on sex workers, particularly HIV/AIDS-infected sex workers (see, for instance Do and Le (1995)
and Hoang (1998)). However, those studies focused on analyzing the social
characteristics, reasons, and current situation of sex workers in relation to
HIV/AIDS transmission. There have been no studies on the awareness, attitudes, and behavior of sex workers towards HIV/AIDS prevention, and there
also has been no research on finding an intervention model for them.
Therefore, doing research on the topic and building an intervention
model of HIV/AIDS transmission prevention for sex workers and people athigh risk for prostitution (like waitresses in restaurants, hotels, and entertainment centers) is an urgent need. In this paper, Quang Ninh—specifically Ha
Long city and Hon Gai town—is chosen because it is a tourism center attracting
many domestic and foreign tourists; there are many restaurants, hotels, andentertainment centers; and as mentioned before, this place has the highest rateof HIV/AIDS-infected people nationwide (572.2 infections/100,000 people).
This paper aims to evaluate the need and to suggest an intervention
model of HIV/AIDS prevention for sex workers and waitresses at high risk forprostitution in restaurants, hotels, and entertainment centers. It will focus on thefollowing research tasks and questions: (i) generalize the previous studies on
the topic and give an overview of official statistics; (ii) evaluate the awareness,
attitudes, and behavior towards HIV/AIDS prevention of sex workers in Quang
Ninh; (iii) study the awareness and attitudes of management persons toward
HIV/AIDS protection for waitresses at high risk for prostitution; and (iv) suggest an intervention model of HIV/AIDS prevention for sex workers and wait-

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An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

resses at high risk.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The next section will
present our research methodology, in which our survey and data will be
described. Section 3 will provide an analysis of the results and policy implications. The last section concludes the paper.

2. Research Methodology
To accomplish the above research tasks and questions, we implemented the following research steps.
First, we collected data from various sources, such as articles, reports,
survey results, and official statistics related to HIV/AIDS prevention for sex
workers. Then we analyzed those pieces of information.
Second, we conducted a sociological survey of 150 sex workers andwaitresses at high risk for prostitution to gather information we would later use
to form an intervention model of HIV/AIDS transmission protection for thegroup. The questionnaires addressed their awareness, attitudes, and behavior
towards HIV/AIDS protection. They were collected and analyzed based on frequency, and relationship of age group, education levels, home town, marital status, and region.
Third, we conducted an in-depth survey of managing people aboutawareness, attitudes, and behavior, such as HIV/AIDS prevention and protection for sex workers and people at high risk. There were 30 in-depth surveys, ofwhich 12 were conducted with local authority officers at the provincial, district,
and ward levels. The other 18 were implemented with owners of restaurants,
hotels, and entertainment centers.
Despite time and financial constraints as well as difficulties inapproaching the people, the research results are reliable and can be a foundationfor evaluating the current needs and for building an intervention model of
HIV/AIDS prevention for sex workers and waitresses at high risk.

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Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

3. Research Results and Analysis
3.1. An overview of the sample and research results
Prostitution and the HIV/AIDS epidemic have been spreading in
Vietnam for the last ten years, and especially after the year 2000. A great dealof research and studies have focused on these topics; some of them focus on
HIV/AIDS-infected sex workers, while others investigate characteristics of the
HIV/AIDS-infected sex workers. Table 1 shows the survey sample for our
research.
3.1.1. Characteristics of sex workers
Sex workers in Vietnam are not a homogeneous group; they vary
widely in personal background, ethnic heritage, age, education, occupation, andfamily situation. About 70 percent of the Vietnamese sex workers are fromrural areas. They travel to cities, begin working in high-risk workplaces, andthen become sex workers. Most of them are still young, ranging in age from 18
to 25. Of sex workers, 70 percent are under 25. The number of adolescent sex
workers is growing higher and higher—especially those working under thename of “waitresses” or “karaoke girls” in entertainment centers. According toan unpublished report on the behavior of sex workers in 2000 with a sample of
2,302 sex workers, the average age of sex workers is 21.9 in Hanoi, and 21.0 in

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An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

Hai Phong. The education of sex workers is generally low. Most of them finish
secondary school with limited social knowledge. Their jobs are very unstable,
and it is quite difficult for them to go back to normal life. Most of them are single or divorced. In general, their families usually have difficulties.
Sex workers are also classified by categories like working location,
income, type of customers, and customer amount. There are three main groups:
the “high-quality” group (young, beautiful), the “medium-quality” group (popular, majority working in inns, restaurants, etc.), and the “low-quality” group(old, ugly, diseased, and working on streets). Besides, there are also karaokegirls. It should be noted that the most difficult to identify group is unprofessional sex workers (or indirect sex workers). They are waitresses working in entertainment centers and service centers. Some of them have other jobs, but theysometimes still work as sex workers.
The working locations and characteristics of sex workers are also
very different, depending on which group they belong to, and how long they
have been working. The “career road” of a sex worker can be described as: atthe beginning, when they are still young and beautiful, they work under thecontrol of managers in restaurants, bars, karaoke, massage centers, inns, andhotels. Then, when they become older and less beautiful, they are dismissed andbecome street walkers. The working time is not the same. Most of them (60–70
percent) work for about three years. This shows that the number of sex workers
is increasing annually. Old sex workers are replaced by younger workers.
Their income varies widely, depending on their class, working location, their customers, and their age. The older they are, the less their income is.
On average, 50 percent of them are paid about 50,000 VND to 100,000 VND
for one time. According to the survey result, about 10 percent of sex workers
have incomes as much as one million VND per month. However, sex workers
cannot receive all the payment. If they work under the management of others,
they have to pay for pimping services. “Indirect” sex workers like karaoke girls,
waitresses, and massage girls have fewer customers than do professional sex
workers, but their income is not less than the professional workers’ income
because separately from the basic payment, they sometimes receive tips from
customers. The attractiveness of the high income makes sex workers find itvery difficult to give up their job and go back to normal life.

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Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

Another feature of the sex worker group is high mobility: sex workers
often change their working location. Because of the high mobility of sex workers, the possibility of HIV transmission is also higher. Higher mobility means
greater difficulty for intervention and prevention activities. With a high frequency of working, the possibility of HIV transmission into the community via
sex workers is high. The average working frequency of a sex worker is two or
three times per day. Some have five or six customers per day.
The customer age ranges from 19 to 50. They are divided into twogroups. The first group includes those who do not have much money and whosejobs are unstable. They work as motorbike drivers, cyclo riders, etc., and havesex with street walkers. The other group is those who have money and stablejobs, and many of them have sex with the “high-quality” girls. Some of themare public servants; others include pupils and students. Customers are the bridge
to transmit HIV from sex workers into the community via their wives or sex
partners. Prevention and intervention activities are therefore a very urgent task.
3.1.2. HIV transmission and HIV/AIDS prevention
According to a report of the Ministry of Health (MoH), in 2002, thetotal amount of accumulated HIV infections in Vietnam was 59,200, of which 4
percent were sex workers. If we look at HIV-infected sex workers as a proportion of total HIV infections, we can see that the percentage of HIV-infected sex
workers is increasing annually. Figure 1 indicates the trend of HIV transmission
among sex workers.
However, the rate of HIV-infected sex workers in surveyed locations
is much higher. For instance, in the Center Number 5 of the Department ofLabor, Invalids and Social Affairs (DOLISA) Hanoi, sex workers accounted for
7.8 percent of HIV infection in 1998; in 1999 the rate was 20.2 percent, and in2000 the rate increased to 31.5 percent. According to the survey result of the
project “Community Actions Against AIDS” in 2002, the rate of HIV infections
among sex workers was very high in frontier provinces in the south, especiallyin An Giang province. In this group, the rate of HIV-infected street walkers(24.3 percent) is higher than the rate of HIV-infected sex workers working inrestaurants (16.2 percent). However, some studies find that most sex workers
are not HIV tested, therefore the actual rate of HIV-infected sex workers is still54

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

unknown, and it may be much higher than the recorded rate. Because sex workers are considered a “high risk” group for HIV infection, doing research on sex
workers’ attitudes and behavior related to HIV/AIDS is very necessary andurgent.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a person who
has the right knowledge about HIV prevention can mention at least two out of
the following three HIV prevention methods: (i) do not have unsafe sex, (ii) use
condoms when having sex, and (iii) do not share injection needles. By this definition, the rate of sex workers who have the right knowledge about HIV prevention is rather low (only 51 percent). According to the survey results from a joint
project between Vietnam and Germany in 2000, 43.3 percent of sex workers
think that they do not have to deal with the risk of HIV transmission, 20.7 percent think that the risk of HIV transmission for them is medium, only 5.2 percent think that they are at high risk of HIV transmission, and 29.8 percent do
not know whether or not they are at risk of HIV transmission. At the same time,
few sex workers spontaneously get themselves tested for HIV tests. And among
those who think that they are at high risk, only 46.7 percent are willing to takean HIV test.
Regarding to the sex behavior related to HIV/AIDS, in most recent
studies, sex workers always said that they only used condoms with unfamiliar
customers. This means that they rarely use condoms when having sex with close
customers or their boyfriends. This should be noted when carrying out interven-

55

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Hation programs. The condom use selection of sex workers puts them at the risk of
HIV transmission into the community. The joint project between Vietnam andGermany in 2000 also finds that the intervention programs provide sex workers
not only condoms, but also counseling and HIV testing services.
Apart from transmission through having sex, the transmission of HIV
among and from sex workers when they share injection needles is also a problem. Among drug-addicted sex workers, many of them use drugs by injection.
There is a relationship between the rate of HIV infection and the rate of drug
injection. It can be said that sex workers are facing a double risk of HIV transmission: they are at the risk of HIV being transmitted from their customers andfrom those who share their injection needles. Once they are infected, they willtransmit the HIV into the community.
Coping with the situation, many propaganda programs and intervention programs have been conducted. However, most of them are just pilot programs and there are difficulties in the legal framework and traditional culturalvalues. The results of those programs show that sex workers received condoms
and counseling services are few. Similarly, few of them have opportunities for
HIV tests and sexually transmitted disease (STD) checking for sex workers.
This reveals another need not only to change the attitudes and behavior of sex
workers, but also to change the attitudes and behavior of the community, especially the local authority managers.
3.2. Awareness of sex workers and waitresses at high risk of HIV/AIDS
transmission and HIV/AIDS prevention
3.2.1. Awareness of the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission
The survey shows that the majority of respondents are aware of thedanger of HIV/AIDS, and of the possibility of HIV/AIDS transmission prevention and of the prevention function of using condoms.
To be precise, 96.7 percent respondents are aware of the danger of
HIV/AIDS. This shows that the propaganda about HIV/AIDS is effective and has
a good impact on the awareness of sex workers and waitresses at high risk. However, some people who have levels of low education cannot be fully aware of thedanger of HIV/AIDS (five people, accounting for 3.3 percent, think that56

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

HIV/AIDS is not a dangerous disease; four of them finished secondary school).
Their thinking will their decision to use or not use HIV/AIDS prevention methods.
Regarding the respondents’ awareness about the transmission of
HIV/AIDS through sex, Figure 2 shows that 15 percent think that HIV/AIDS is
not easily transmitted, and even cannot be transmitted through sex. It can beconcluded that many people are not fully aware of the possibility sexual transmission of HIV/AIDS. It is more dangerous when the sex workers and waitresses in restaurants, bars, and entertainment centers—who are at high risk—are notaware of the danger of the epidemic. When they are not aware of the danger ofunsafe sex, the possibility of HIV transmission into the community is very high.
If we look at the background and the answers of the respondents, wewill see a significant difference between rural and urban respondents. Only 76.3
percent of rural sex workers and waitresses think that HIV/AIDS can be sexually transmitted, while 92.4 percent of urban respondents know about this. Therefore, it can also be concluded that the propaganda about the HIV/AIDS epidemic is conducted better in urban areas than in rural areas.
Although most respondents think that HIV/AIDS is avoidable, theirknowledge about prevention methods is very poor; even some of them evenbelieve incorrect information. The wrong understanding about HIV/AIDS prevention will lead to discriminative attitudes toward HIV-infected people (nearly
76 percent of the respondents). Some people believed that HIV could be transmitted through kissing, even holding or shaking hands. In Table 2, among the57

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

prevention methods, having safe sex to protect oneself from HIV transmission(maintaining monogamous sexual relationship with partner and using condoms)
was selected by most respondents.
However, 62 percent of the respondents think that HIV/AIDS is
avoidable and preventable even when they have sex with many people. Therefore, it is clear that these respondents are over confident that they will be safe inany case.
3.2.2. Awareness, attitudes, and behavior of the interviewees towards themethod of using condoms to avoid sexual transmission
The above section discussed the survey results about the awareness ofsex workers and waitresses at high risk about HIV/AIDS prevention methods.
Awareness about the prevention function of condoms was also discussed. We
will next go into more depth on the results, focusing on the awareness, attitudes,
and behavior towards the use of condoms to prevent sexual transmission of
HIV/AIDS.
The survey shows that different people have different awareness, attitudes, and behavior towards using condoms, and also different difficulties inusing condoms. Only 2 out of 150 respondents do not know about the prevention function of condoms. This means 98.7 percent—a sweeping majority—know that using condoms is an effective method to prevent HIV/AIDS sexualtransmission. However, respondents’ attitudes towards using condoms do notcorrespond with their awareness. Although 98.7 percent are aware of the importance and function of condoms, only 68.0 percent want to use them. This meansthat 30.7 percent do not want to use condoms (see Table 3 for more detail).
Why do some people not want to use condoms? There are many rea-58

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Provincesons. According to the survey, 36 percent said that both they and their partners
do not want to use condoms; 35 percent do not want to use condoms because
they do not like to use them; 33 percent do not use condoms because their sex
partners do not want to use them; and only 6 percent answered that they do notuse condoms because they do not have any (Figure 3).
These results indicate that people do not use condoms because of subjective reasons—not because of objective reasons like lack of accessibility(Table 4). Therefore, consulting activities are necessary to persuade them to use
condoms. The aims should be (i) to persuade them to use condoms and (ii) toequip them with skills to persuade their partners to agree to use condoms.
Regarding the question of frequency of using condoms, only 36 percent use condoms frequently. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents answered59

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

Never
16 %

Sometimes
48 %Frequently
36 %that they sometimes use or never use condoms (Figure 4).
To sum up, there is a wide variety among the attitudes of sex workers
towards condom use. As mentioned above, 96.7 percent are aware of the dangerof HIV/AIDS, and 85.0 percent know that HIV/AIDS is easily sexually transmitted. Although 98.7 percent know that using condoms is an effective method
to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission, only 68.0 percent want to use condoms andonly 36.0 percent use condoms frequently. Therefore, about one-third do notwant to use condoms and nearly two-thirds do not use condoms frequently.
It can be concluded that propaganda activities should focus not only
on the danger of HIV/AIDS, its transmission possibility, and prevention methods, but also on personal consulting, group discussion, experience exchange
activities, club activities, and other activities for sex workers in order to change

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their attitudes and behavior.
The survey also shows that the decision of not using condoms depend
not only on sex workers but also on their partners and the surrounding conditions. Therefore, analyzing the answers shows that each person’s freedom touse condoms is not the same; 28 percent cannot decide by themselves whether
or not to use condoms.
If we consider the age of the respondents in analyzing their condom
use, we can also see that there is a relationship between age and the decision touse condoms. The older they are, the greater their ability to decide whether touse condoms (Figure 5). The experience of sex workers may explain this result.
When they are more experienced, they are more skillful in persuading theirpartners to use condoms.
If the answers are analyzed with consideration to education level, we
can see that the higher the education level is, the more ability the sex workers
can persuade their sex partners to use condoms (Figure 6). The ability to decide
to use condoms among those who have college or university education level isdouble that of those who finished only primary school (88 percent and 43 percent, respectively). Therefore, intervention activities should focus more on
those who have low education levels because their ability and awareness about
condom use is limited.
One of the reasons confirmed by 31.7 percent of respondents for notusing condoms is that they are not able to persuade their sex partners. There-61

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

fore, persuading partners to use condoms is not simple for normal sex workers,
especially for young ones (Table 5), and ones who have low education levels(Table 6).
When being asked about the reason of not using condoms, 88 percent
think that people do not use condoms because they are not well aware of thetransmission of the virus behind the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Two other reasons
are that people do not want to use condoms and that they do not know how topersuade partners to use condoms (Table 7).
Analyzing the answers by age group helps to conclude that age (related to experience) has an impact on the ability to persuade sex partners to use
condoms. Counseling is especially necessary for those under 30. Also, as wehave seen, higher education levels mean a greater ability to persuade sex partners to use condoms. The survey results show that the persuading ability of
those who finish college or university is up to three or six times higher than thatof those who finish only primary education.
Two answers, “do not have condoms” and “not allowed to use condoms,” were also mentioned. About 20 percent of the respondents chose these62

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

two answers. However, these are reasons of the surrounding conditions, andalthough they should not be neglected when encouraging people to use condoms. The respondents think that they are less important than the three reasonsmentioned above. Therefore, it is essential to focus on psychological changes
like the changes in awareness, attitudes, behavior, and persuading ability. The
second focus should be on improving the surrounding conditions like providing
condoms and persuading managers to allow sex workers to use condoms.
3.2.3. Needs and desires of the sex workers, and proposal of an intervention
model to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission
The purpose of the survey is to gain information to form a properintervention model through which to reduce HIV/AIDS transmission amongand from sex workers. Therefore, studying their needs and desires is very
important. The needs, desires, and habits of the respondents could be under-

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stood through a series of questions about how they use their spare time. Figure
7 and Table 8 present our survey results from these questions.
The most popular activity in spare time is sleeping and relaxing.
Respondents also spend their free time on watching TV, reading, meeting
friends, shopping, and going to the cinema or theatre. Although they do not64An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

have as much free time as their managers said, they still participate in many
activities and have demand for communication and entertainment. However, if
we analyze relationship of these answers with other factors, we can see differences in the demands, preferences, and habits of each group. For instance,
activities chosen in free time vary across educational level. The results showthat those who have a primary education level rarely participate in activities
outside, whereas those who have higher education levels, such as those withcollege and university education, are likely to participate in many other activities. When they have free time, they prefer reading and shopping to sleeping
and relaxing.
The habits of different groups should be focused on when organizing
intervention activities. However, when being asked about their current priority,
most of the interviewees replied that their desire was job and income first, thenemotional life, and next their health (Figure 8). Entertainment was the last priority.
The survey data also indicate great differences in the desires of eachgroup, divided by age (Table 9) and educational level (Table 10).
Table 9 shows that respondents who are over 30 pay more attention to
health care, emotional life, and entertainment than do the other groups. Respondents in the under-20 group pay more attention to job and income, and little
attention to studying and nearly no attention to other activities. It can be said
that if intervention activities, such as counseling activities, club activities, andpeer education activities, are carried out, the under-20 group will be the mostdifficult group to attract.
In Table 10, the group of low education level (primary school) pay
most attention to entertainment and least attention to studying and health care.
The group of higher education (college, university) pay most attention to studying and least attention to income. The two groups of secondary and high school
education levels pay most attention to job and income, and then to emotional
life and health care. These differences in priority should be taken into consideration to organize proper intervention activities. At the same time, it is necessary
to pay attention to integrative activities, such as propaganda programs, education programs, supporting programs, and entertainment programs. These activities should be organized in order to be attractive enough for all ages and education levels.

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Because of the characteristics of their occupation, sex workers copewith a great deal of trouble and problems in daily life. But when they have difficulties, from whom will they seek help or support? Those who they will go tofor help are the ones who have the most influence on the behavior and attitudesof sex workers or waitresses. Intervention must be more effective through suchpeople. Respondents deal with difficulty in several ways.
As the most popular solution, the majority (60.7 percent) will seekfamily’s help to share their difficulty (Table 11). It is traditional for Vietnamese
people to seek family’s help when they have difficulty. The majority understandand are aware of the value of their family in dealing with their personal problems. However, it is not certain that they do receive the help from their family
because many of them are living far away from their families and are not able
to return to their family when they have difficulty. Actually, many of them feelashamed of their occupation and feel that they cannot return to their families.
Some of them even avoid contacting their families. Perhaps due to this situation, 41.3 percent chose friends at their workplace, instead of their families, toshare their difficulties. The other 30.7 percent share difficulty with friends whocome from the same hometown. An intervention model of peer education in66

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

clubs would be appropriate in this case. According to the survey results, 88 percent are willing to participate in clubs.
However, among those who want to participate in club activities,
expectations differ widely (Table 12). Health care and consulting activities are
expected by most respondents. Other expectations are cultural activities, sport
activities, AIDS propaganda, free health check and treatment, providing condoms, and life consultants. Collected data, however, indicated that there weredifferent expectations of waitresses in groups depending on age and educational
level. The group of those over 30 want to attend all the club’s activities.
Younger people want to attend fewer activities, especially the group of people
who are under 20.
Regarding to the education level (Table 13), the group of those whohave low education level (primary) pays most attention to sport activities andcultural activities, but little attention to health care. The college and university
group pays more attention to AIDS prevention propaganda and condom supplying, but they do not pay attention to free health care. The other two groups pay
most attention to health care consultant.
It can be affirmed that when organizing club activities, we should consider the characteristics and expectations of the respondents at different ages with different education levels in order to make the intervention activities more effective.
3.3. Influences of the authorities over sex workers and waitresses at highrisk in terms of HIV/AIDS prevention
Intervention activities will be more effective if both the sex workers
and their managers are approached in terms of awareness, attitudes, and behavior. Table 4 shows that 28 percent of the respondents said that they could not67

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

decide to use or not to use condoms by themselves. This points to the fact thatsurrounding conditions have a significant influence on the safety of their sexual
behavior. This was the reason for us to study the managers’ impact on
HIV/AIDS prevention for sex workers. Therefore, the surveyors conducted anin-depth survey with the two groups of managers. The first group includes local
government officers and union members who are directly managing the sex
workers, and the second group includes owners of hotels, motels, inns, restaurants, karaoke entertainment centers, etc.
First, we can see that, at the macro level, local authorities have a great
impact on policy application. The effectiveness of the HIV/AIDS prevention
activities depends much on how the local authorities understand prostitution;
the possibility of HIV transmission depends on whether their awareness isequivalent to their attitudes or behavior. Thus, the direct managers of sex workers are those who may change the behavior of sex workers. Data in Table 7
indicate that 19.3 percent of sex workers said that they did not use condoms
because they were not allowed to use them, and the results in Table 11 indicatethat 12.0 percent would seek the help of their managers when they have problems. Therefore, it is clear that the awareness, attitudes, and behavior of mastersof restaurants, hotels, and entertainment centers will have impact on the awareness and attitudes of sex workers towards HIV/AIDS prevention and sexual
behavior.
3.4. Local authority officers, associations, and unions
3.4.1. Awareness of prostitution and disguised prostitution
The majority of the authority officers were worried about the prostitution increase, especially that of disguised prostitution in tourism centers. A
police officer in Quang Ninh said, “Quang Ninh is a developing tourism center.
It attracts many tourists and prostitution is unavoidable. However, the prostitution activities are all disguised and very difficult to discover. Normally, sex
workers and customers make a deal over the telephone and then they hire a
motel or hotel to have sex, and so it is quite difficult to control and manage.
Disguised prostitution surely exists but is hard to identify.”
Some of the sex workers in disguised prostitution here are waitresses
working in restaurants, bars, and entertainment centers. A woman union’s offi-

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An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

cer said, “Waitresses easily change their occupation and become sex workers
because of their working environment. They may not prostitute at their working
places but they can go somewhere else.”
All the local officers and officers at unions and associations confirmed that disguised prostitution has become popular with call girls working inhotels and motels. A difficulty in controlling the waitresses is that most of themcome from other provinces and they work temporarily in bars, hotels, motels,
and entertainment centers. Many of waitresses do not even register their residence and they do not have any personal papers. In order to manage these people, we need a comprehensive management solution with the support of information technology to maintain the database. If such a database is established, an
officer of a department of prevention of social evil stated, “wherever sex workers are arrested, police will know how many times they have been arrested, andhow to treat them.”
3.4.2. Awareness of the possibility of HIV/AIDS transmission among sex
workers, and the necessity to apply prevention methods to prevent
HIV/AIDS for sex workers
Prostitution—and especially disguised prostitution—is becoming
more popular. It seems that prostitution activities have grown to exceed the
managing ability of authority officers. People are worrying about the transmission of HIV/AIDS in their community because of the uncontrollable development of prostitution and disguised prostitution. Most government officers surveyed agreed that the possibility of HIV/AIDS transmission from sex workers
through disguised prostitution is a high risk for the community. A medical officer shared that “the HIV/AIDS infection rate in Quang Ninh is the highest
nationwide, and it is 10 times higher than the average rate of the whole country.
The number of infected people in Quang Ninh is second highest after Ho Chi
Minh City. It is obvious that besides drug addiction and injection, prostitution isanother high possibility of HIV/AIDS transmission. Especially, the possibilityof HIV/AIDS-infected waitresses working in restaurants, bars, karaoke establishments, hotels, motels, and entertainment centers is very high, ranking second after the possibility of drug addicted people.” Results of many in-depth
interviews also show that risks from sex workers all stem from unsafe sexual69

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

behavior. So waitresses at high risk should also be educated in HIV/AIDS prevention programs. One medical officer at the ward level said that “if waitresses
at high risk are not protected from HIV/AIDS, they will become a risk for thecommunity. And the way of transmission from them is unsafe sex.”
A ward-level authority officer also warned that “we must prevent
HIV transmission from infected sex workers and warn infected people about
their transmission possibility.” He also cited a letter written by an HIV-infected
sex worker before she committed suicide. She said that she had transmitted HIV
to many foreign people. However, she did not mention how many Vietnamese
people had received HIV from her.
Some interviewed local officers said that even if prostitution is prohibited by the government, it still exists. Therefore, to protect the communityfrom the dangerous risk, we must apply prevention methods for both the community and sex workers.
3.4.3. Attitudes towards prevention method application for sex workers
and waitresses at high risk
Authority officers are all aware of the danger of HIV/AIDS amongsex workers. They all support HIV/AIDS prevention programs for sex workers
and waitresses at high risk for prostitution. Among the prevention methods, thefirst method to be mentioned is management by authorities and government.
Polices must manage and control all profiles of waitresses working in restaurants, bars, karaoke establishments, hotels, motels, and entertainment centers.
For restaurant, hotel, and entertainment center owners, they must guarantee that
there will not be any kind of prostitution in their business. Administrative management should be improved. To limit the number of sex workers, if waitresses
at high risk do not have personal papers, they will not be allowed to register
their temporary residence.
The second method is propaganda. Propaganda programs should be
conducted to approach both sex workers and sex buyers. Peer group propaganda
is also necessary, especially for those who have low education levels. Peer
propaganda should be focused more on unskilled laborers in Bai Chay and Cam
Pha towns because most of them are working away from their families, andthey will easily spend money on prostitution.

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The third method is condom use encouragement programs. A medical
officer said that “not everyone is aware of the importance of condom use. Condoms are provided for free in all hotels and motels but not all sex buyers want
to use condoms. Staff at hotels, motels, and entertainment centers may work as
sex workers but they do not have sex at their working places—they do it somewhere else. Therefore, approaching them is quite difficult. Propaganda programs should be strengthened and improved in order to protect the community
and the sex workers.”
Another medical officer shared that condom providing is also a sensitive issue. People must understand that giving them condoms does not mean toencourage them to have sex, but to protect them from sexually transmitted diseases.
In addition, a socio-economic method to prevent HIV/AIDS infection
is job creation. Women should be given priority in finding a suitable job. Vocational training for sex workers is necessary in order to give them a chance tointegrate into the community and have a normal life.
Another proposed method is to provide free health care services for
waitresses at high risk. These services would be put in place to discoverwhether or not they are HIV-infected, and if they are infected, to provide themappropriate support. Free health care should be combined with other activities
like club activities, propaganda programs to improve awareness towards
HIV/AIDS prevention, and providing condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission into community.
3.4.4. Main proposals: Free health care and condoms provision
Free health examination and treatment for waitresses at high risk arevery essential. The first reason is that they are always hesitant to go to medical
centers for health examination and treatment. The second reason is that theycannot afford medical services. The third reason is that through health examination, authority officers can discover whether or not they are HIV/AIDS-infected, and if they are infected, they will receive appropriate solutions to prevent
HIV/AIDS transmission.
Many ideas we heard in the surveys held in common that healthexamination and treatment are not only the demand of waitresses at high risk

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but also the demand of the whole society. It should be noted that free healthcare provided by the masters or managers of restaurants, bars, or entertainment
centers is nearly a farce. Therefore, financially supported health care programs
are necessary. Even if the health care is provided with financial support, manysex workers dare not to go because they do not want others to know that they
are sex workers, and that they have diseases.
When waitresses are healthy, they can still work. But when they diagnosed to be diseased, they will be dismissed. The situation of dismissed sex
workers is very miserable; the time after being dismissed is the time they mostneed help and support. Propaganda programs should focus on these people tosupport them in time. Sex workers should be informed of an address for urgent
care that they can visit whenever they have difficulty. If one person is helped
and supported in a time of trouble, that person’s friends and peers will come tothat address too when they have troubles. This is a peer education method.
In contrast to the wide agreement we found regarding health care,
opinions about how to provide condoms are very different. There are three maingroups with different suggestions. The first group said that condoms should be
provided through masters—the managers of restaurants, hotels, and entertainment centers, and that the condoms should be provided with appropriate propaganda. The second group thought that condoms should be provided directly to
sex workers and waitresses. Providing condoms at a consulting office is another
opinion, put forward with the reason that visits to such an office are the mostsuitable time for propaganda.
Because prostitution is illegal, approaching sex workers is very difficult; to provide them condoms is also not easy. Second, it is illegal to support
prostitution or any prostitution-related activities. Therefore, from the outside,
providing sex workers with condoms seems to be illegal. Third, providing condoms will be rejected by restaurants, bars, and entertainment centers in mostcases.
A police officer said that “another difficulty when providing condoms
is a psychological dilemma. If there are condoms in restaurants, bars, and entertainment centers, people may think that they are encouraging prostitution. But if
there is no condom, it will be difficult to prevent HIV/AIDS.”
Although the difficulties are identified, all interviewees agreed that it72

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

is essential to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission for sex workers and waitresses athigh risk.
3.5. Managers and owners of restaurants, bars, hotels, and entertainment
centers
3.5.1. Awareness and attitude towards HIV/AIDS prevention for waitresses
In every in-depth interview, managers and owners of restaurants,
bars, hotels, and entertainment centers all confirmed that HIV/AIDS was very
dangerous and incurable. A director of a hotel in Ha Long said that “HIV/AIDS
is still a pressing problem in our society. It is easily transmitted. The latent timeof AIDS is long. If we do not know how to protect ourselves from HIV/AIDS,
we will face the risk of being infected by HIV/AIDS.”
These interviewees are aware of the two ways of HIV transmission:
through injected drug use and through unsafe sexual behavior. Many of themsaid that it was necessary to protect and prevent their female staff members
from HIV/AIDS because their prevention and protection also means the protection and prevention for the whole society. However, many interviewees thoughtthat it was not necessary to prevent HIV for their waitresses because they
believed that these workers have no relations with HIV/AIDS. Currently, there
are no prevention and protection methods available in their locations.
Some sympathized with HIV-infected waitresses if such workers
were working in their locations. They understood that if they neglected anddrove away such employees, the infected waitresses would become more dangerous for society. However, many did not express such sympathy.
It can be concluded that some of the interviewees had good attitudes
toward HIV/AIDS prevention and protection, while others did not.
3.5.2. Attitudes of managers towards applying prevention methods for
waitresses
Some interviewees think that providing regular and periodical healthexamination for staff is very good. But the frequency must depend on theirfinancial ability and other conditions. Some interviewees said that, if these
examinations are provided by a government agency, it would be better.
About condom provision, interviewees have many different ideas.

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Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

Some think that condoms should not be provided in hotels or entertainment centers because doing so may unintentionally encourage prostitution. Another reason is that if condoms are provided freely in hotels and entertainment centers,
sex workers may think that the hotels and entertainment centers agree and support them to have sex there.
For those hotels and entertainment centers who would agree to provide condoms at their locations, they suggested that condoms should be given
in an appropriate way, such as keeping them in the medicine box. Customers
could then use them at their own discretion.
3.6. Proposed intervention model for sex workers and waitresses at highrisk
3.6.1. Suggestions from local authorities
In in-depth interviews and the discussion among members of theresearch group, local authorities suggested that there should be educational andsupporting activities in the forms of clubs, peer groups, “friend-help-friend”
groups, health care, and examination programs.
One interviewee emphasized that education and supporting activities
for waitresses in hotels and entertainment centers are essential, but there will be
one problem that no one would admit to being a sex worker. Therefore, theinterviewee said, encouraging people to attend these activities is very difficult.
On the other hand, sharing work time for attending public activities like that
may not be supported by their bosses.
Another suggestion was that we should focus on creating clubs, suchas a young mother club, female youth club, or health care club, to attract highrisk people to attend. Condoms would be provided freely in these clubs. If
activities were conducted in this way, infected people would not feel that they
are treated differently from normal people and they would be more encouraged
to attend. Club officers should be sensitive and enthusiastic because sex workers and waitresses at high risk often have a complex about their jobs and situations.
It was suggested that the activities of clubs be diversified, and that, if
possible, vocational training be combined with other activities because sex
workers need a stable profession in order to return to normal life. Some appro-74

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

priate activities might include flower arranging and cooking.
We heard many different opinions about the number of club members. Some think that because high-risk waitresses are those who are very difficult to approach to attract them to attend the club activities, clubs should beorganized right at their locations. In order to be effective, some said that clubs
should be limited to 6–10 core members.
Others think that the size of the clubs should be neither too small nor
too big. Clubs should not be too big because their activities therefore would bevery well-known, which is not attractive for hesitant people like sex workers.
On the other hand, if there are only a few members, clubs’ activities would not
be attractive enough. Some think that an appropriate number of club members
should be about 20. Others think that the number of club members must dependon the situation in each province, and that there should be about 30 to 50 members in a club.
Clubs’ activities should be under the control of local authority. The
participation and support from women’s unions, the Department of Tourism, thepolice, HIV/AIDS Prevention Committees, and ward committees are necessary.
3.6.2. Opinions of the mangers of restaurants, hotels, and entertainment
centers
According to the results of the in-depth surveys with managers ofrestaurants, hotels, and entertainment centers, many of them supported the ideaof organizing clubs for sex workers and waitresses at high-risk. In an opinion
echoed by others, one interviewee said, “To prevent HIV/AIDS in hotels and in
the community, we are willing to provide conditions for those who want toattend clubs. But we will not be able to force them to attend these activities.”
Some others went further, with one saying “We will support and allow ourwaitresses to attend activities for HIV/AIDS prevention. If these activities are
effective, we may financially support them to make it become more effective.”
Some mangers also understand that the importance of clubs’ activities
is not only in HIV/AIDS prevention but also in awareness improvement of theirstaff.
One hotel manager in Quang Ninh also highly evaluated the role ofclubs in educating and managing waitresses. This manager said that, “we also

75

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

remind them and try to persuade them to attend such activities, but we did notknow how to say persuasively as we are not professionals and so they did notunderstand. Therefore, if they attend clubs, they would understand and could
receive the necessary knowledge.” However, there are some opposite opinions.
For example, “We are too busy with our business. We have no time for otherthings. And if our staff members have spare time, they need to sleep instead ofgoing to clubs.”
For these people, propaganda and persuading activities are necessary.
Some further suggestions for clubs’ activities include:• Club organization: A manager of a hotel in Ha Long suggested, “Because
hotel staff members work by shifts, clubs should be organized at the proper time and location. The activities should be changed frequently to be
attractive.”• Club member: It is suggested that the core members should be female.
Each hotel or entertainment center should choose for themselves one or
two core members to attend in turn because they cannot go to the club at
the same time. They still have to work. Some people think that the members should be not only staff working in hotels or entertainment centers,
but also from other organizations. More members will mean more active
and interesting activities.
• Activity content: It should focus on HIV/AIDS prevention propaganda
because people go to clubs for consultation about HIV/AIDS prevention.
A hotel manager said, “For the purposes of HIV/AIDS prevention andprostitution prevention, I think that clubs are necessary but the locations
must be appropriate and integrated with other organizations’ activities.”
Therefore, it is obvious that though there are some different opinions,most hotel and entertainment centers agreed with the idea of establishing clubs.
However, they do not have a clear picture of appropriate club activities.

4. Concluding Remarks and Recommendations
Following are our findings and recommendations for HIV/AIDS prevention for sex workers and waitresses at high risk.
1. Sex workers working in hotels, entertainment centers, and massage cen-76

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Provinceters are many. However, their awareness about HIV/AIDS prevention israther low. Their managers do not pay enough attention to protect theirstaff from the epidemic.
2. Almost all waitresses interviewed in the survey were aware of the dangerof HIV/AIDS transmission and the function of condoms in HIV/AIDS
prevention. However, many people are not fully aware of the transmission possibilities of HIV/AIDS and prevention methods. The majority of
new waitresses have a good awareness about sexual transmission possibility of HIV/AIDS. Some interviewees have incorrect understanding andthen have discriminative attitudes towards infected people.
3. There is a difference between awareness, attitudes and priority versus
self-decision making ability. There is also a gap between the ability topersuade sex partners to use condoms and condom use to prevent
HIV/AIDS. According to the survey data, the awareness of respondents
about HIV/AIDS is rather high. But their attitudes towards prevention
method application are significantly lower: safe sexual behaviors are notpaid much attention. Therefore, in the propaganda programs of
HIV/AIDS prevention, improving awareness is not enough. The more
important thing is to change their attitudes and behavior.
4. In addition to good propaganda programs about the danger of HIV/AIDS,
its transmission possibility, and HIV/AIDS prevention methods, weshould also apply psychological methods. Activities which require individual participation like clubs, peer education groups, and personal consultation to change attitudes, to provide living skills, and to create necessary habits and behavior are important.
5. The most important factor in applying condom use encouragement
among sex workers is psychological impact. That means to change theirawareness, attitudes, behavior, and ability to persuade their sex partners
to use condoms. Creating good surrounding conditions is essential. Surrounding conditions are the availability of condoms and the agreement of
their boss for them to use condoms when they have sex.
6. In addition to families, friends are the ones whom sex workers seek forhelp when they have trouble. Therefore, peer clubs for waitresses would
be very effective.

77

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

7. Knowledge provision, life skill training, health support, and entertainment activities like singing, sports, flower arranging, and cooking should
be integrated in clubs’ activities. Classes should be designed in order tobe suitable for those who have different education levels.
8. The content of education and activities of clubs for waitresses and peergroups should prioritize knowledge about HIV/AIDS prevention, about
HIV transmission risks with all types of sex partners, and about the ability to persuade their partners to use condoms. It is necessary to maintainthe availability of condoms. Periodical health examination is necessary todetect infections early.
9. Improvements should be made in the health care service network, thecondom providing network, and the consulting network for women in difficulty, especially for those who are sex workers and waitresses working
at high-risk locations. Government and local authority support needs tobe mobilized.
10. Local government officials must have the right attitude towards
HIV/AIDS prevention and protection. Apart from that, they should apply
a more realistic plan to apply AIDS prevention methods among waitresses and sex workers.
11. The role of hotel and entertainment managers is important. They will
have a direct impact on the decision and possibility to attend clubs for sex
workers and waitresses working at their locations.
12. In order to implement effectively intervention models for sex workers
and waitresses, government officials and social unions must cooperate tomobilize these women to participate in club activities. Medical centersshould provide condoms to them and support them in health care services. Police should pay more attention to security at high-risk locations.

References

Chung A, Nguyen, D. T et al. 1999. “Danh gia nhanh cac diem nong co nguy co lam lan
truyen HIV doc theo quoc lo chinh thuoc cac tinh Tien Giang, Dong Thap, Dong
Nai va Khanh Hoa” (Evaluation of the Potential Places, which can Expand HIV

78

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

Transmission, on the Highways of Tien Giang, Dong Thap, Dong Nai, and Khanh
Hoa Provinces).
Chu, Q, A, Nguyen, D. T et al. 2000. “Dac diem xa hoi hoc va cac hanh vi nguy co lay
nhiem HIV/AIDS/BLTDTD tren quan the phu nu ban dam o Viet Nam”, Du an hop
tac ky thuat Viet-Duc, thang 12/2000. (Sociological Characteristics and Behavoirs
making Higher HIV Transmission among Sex Workers in Vietnam; Vietnam-Germany Technical Co-operation Project, December 2000).
Do, T. K, and Le, T. H. 1995. “Nhung dac trung tam ly xa hoi co ban cua phu nu bandam” (Basic Sociological Characteristics of the Sex Workers). Hanoi: Ministry ofLabor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA).
Hoang, A. V. et al. 1998. “Buoc dau tim hieu mot so yeu to nguy co va tinh hinh nhiem
HIV trong nhom phu nu ban dam tai tinh Dak Lak”. (Initial Steps to Understand
HIV Risk and Contagion among Sex Workers in Dak Lak Province).
Hoang, T. L. et al. 1999. “Giam sat dich te hoc nhiem HIV/ AIDS o Vietnam”. (Controlling HVI/AIDS Epidemic in Vietnam).
Khuat, T. H. et al. 1998. “Mai dam va nhung he luy kinh te, xa hoi”. (Prostitution andSocio-economic Consequences).
Le, P. 1999. “Buoc dau nhan dien ve khach lang choi”. (Initial Understanding of Whoremaster), mimeo.
Le, T. H. 1998. “Dieu tra nghien cuu tai Trung tam 05 thuoc So Lao dong, Thuong binhva Xa hoi Hanoi voi 61 doi tuong gai mai dam va 136 gai mai dam o trai Loc Ha”.
(Research Survey of 61 Sex Workers at Center No. 05 of Hanoi DOLISA, and 136
Sex Workers in Loc Ha Center), mimeo.
Lynellyn D. Long; and Y. Taylor. 1999. “Nhung cuoc doi dau kho: Danh gia thuc hanhxa hoi va hanh vi phong ngua HIV/AIDS tai tinh Can Tho”. (Miserable Lives: Evaluation of Social Practice and HIV/AIDS Prevention Activities in Can Tho).
USAIDS. 2002. “Bao cao ket qua giam sat hanh vi nam 2000”. (Report on Behavior
Monitoring, 2000). Hanoi: Ministry of Health, Vietnam, and USAIDS.

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Appendix 1: Survey Questionnaires

Dear friend!

To give a hand to women’s health care, we would like to ask for yourcooperation in answering the following questions. Please tick the answer(s) thatyou think most suitable, or please give your opinions for the questions with special requirements.
Your cooperation is highly appreciated!
1. Do your current job have a bad effect on your health?
1. Yes

2. No

2. Do you think that HIV/AIDS is a dangerous disease and that infected
people may die of it?
1. Yes

2. No

3. What do you think about the possibility of HIV/AIDS sexual transmission?
1. Easy
2. Difficult
3. Impossible
4. Are you afraid of being infected?
1. Yes

2. No

5. Do you think that HIV/AIDS is preventable?
1. Yes

2. No

If yes, how?
1. Monogamous relationship with partner
2. Not kissing, not holding or shaking hands with HIV/AIDS-infected people
3. Using condoms when having sex
4. Not sharing injection tools
5. HIV-infected mother should not have baby
6. Others (in detail please): ______________________________
6. Using condoms when having sex is an effective method to prevent
HIV/AIDS transmission. Did you know that?
1. Yes

2. No

7. Why do you think people do not use condoms when they have sex?

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An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

1. Not aware of the transmission of this disease
2. They are not allowed to use
3. They do not know how to persuade their sex partners
4. They do not have condoms
5. They do not want to use condoms
6. Other reasons (please list): _____________________________
8. Do you want to use condoms when having sex?
1. Yes

2. No

9. How frequently do you use condoms when having sex?
1. Very frequently
2. Sometimes
3. Never10. Are you allowed to use condoms when having sex?
1. Yes

2. No

11. Do you often have difficulty in persuading your sex partners to use condoms when having sex?
1. Yes

2. No

12. Are you encouraged to use condoms when having sex?
1. Yes

2. No

13. According to your observation, how often does a sex worker have sex
per day?
1. 0–2 times
2. 3–10 times
3. Over 10 times
14. Which do you think is more difficult when having sex? (please choose
one option only)
1. To persuade sex partners to use condoms
2. To persuade managers to let you use condoms
15. Do you think that it is still possible to prevent HIV/AIDS when having
sex with many different people?
1. Yes

2. No

If yes, please list how to prevent: ____________________________
16. Would you like to attend club activities with your peers?
1. Yes

2. No

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Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

If yes, which ones do you prefer?
1. Singing, dancing
2. Sport activities
3. Health care consultation
4. Free health examination and treatment
5. AIDS prevention and protection propaganda
6. Condom introduction and provision
7. Life skill training
8. Others (please list): _______________________
17. What do you often do when you have spare time ?
1. Relax
2. Read
3. Watch TV
4. Shop
5. Meet friends
6. Go to cinema
7. Others
18. When you have problem, who do you go to for help?
1. Friends from the same province
2. Colleagues
3. Boss
4. Family
5. No one (solve yourself)
6. Others
19. What is your highest priority now?
1. Emotional life
2. Job, income
3. Health care
4. Studying
5. Entertainment
6. Others
20. Please let us know some more about you:
Age:Over 30

82

Under 20

From 21 to 25

From 26 to 30

An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

Education level:

Primary school

Secondary school

High school

University, college

Your hometown:

City, town

Rural area

Marital status:

MarriedSingleThank you very much for your cooperation and we wish you good health!

83

Nguyen Thi Minh Tam and Le Thi Ha

Appendix 2: In-depth Interview Questions
for Local Government Officials

1. Is there any prostitution in your location? If yes, how serious is it? And
where is the most popular location?
2. How do you evaluate the possibility of AIDS infection possibility of waitresses in hotels and entertainment centers?
3. Do you think that if sex workers are not protected against HIV/AIDS transmission, they would be a risk for the whole community? Why or why not?
4. Do you agree with the opinion that even if the government forbids prostitution, we should not neglect the risk of HIV/AIDS-infected sex workers andit is necessary to apply prevention methods? Please list some methods thatyou know.
5. In your opinion, what are the obstacles in applying HIV/AIDS prevention
methods?
6. In your opinion, does condom provision for sex workers and waitresses
eliminate the transmission possibility of HIV/AIDS? If you think so, howshould condoms be provided?
7. To prevent prostitution and AIDS, do you think that it is necessary to havesocial activities like clubs, education activities, and supporting activities forsex workers and waitresses at high risk? If you agree, how should we organize these activities?
8. Do you have any opinion about HIV/AIDS prevention for sex workers andwaitresses at high risk?
9. Do you have any recommendation for the government to improve the effectof HIV/AIDS prevention activities for the community in general and for sex
workers in particular?

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An Intervention Model of HIV/AIDS Protection for Sex Workers:The Case of Quang Ninh Province

Appendix 3: In-depth Interview Questionsfor Managers in Hotels and Entertainment Centers

1. What do you think about HIV/AIDS prevention and protection of your staff,
especially your female staff members?
2. How do you evaluate the need for periodical health examination and for
health examination of your staff? Is it necessary to have supporting healthcare services to help waitresses?
3. If there were any HIV/AIDS-infected people among your young staff members, what would you do?
4. In your opinion, is it necessary for managers of hotels and entertainment
centers to provide conditions or to participate in condom provision activities
to stop the epidemic? If you think it is necessary, what are the advantages
and disadvantages in your location?
5. As a manager, which prevention methods do you apply to prevent
HIV/AIDS transmission in your location?
6. To prevent HIV/AIDS and prostitution, do you think that it is necessary tohave social activities to gather waitresses to provide them help and support?
Which models do you think are suitable?
7. According to your observation, do waitresses have time, and do they reallywant to attend these activities? Which models do you think are suitable?
8. If they have that need, how should the activities be organized to be effective(member number, content of the activities, location)?
9. Do you have any interesting ideas about HIV/AIDS prevention for waitresses working in hotels, restaurants, and entertainment centers?
10. Do you have any recommendation for the government to improve the effectof HIV/AIDS prevention activities for the community in general and for sex
workers in particular?

85

Chapter 4
Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam
Dang Nguyen Anh

Abstract
This paper utilizes the data from the Survey Assessment of Vietnamese Youth (SAVY) to
outline the current situation of work and employment of Vietnamese youths, arguing that
their school-to-work transition is quite limited. With a special focus on identifying risk andprotective factors during the school-to-work transition of youth, the paper examines thehealth risk behaviors of youth groups with different work experience and the ability ofyoung people to be employed given their demand for jobs, skills, training, and capability towork. The findings reveal that the family in which a young person lives serves as an important factor in determining the youth employment experience. The paper concludes with policy implications aimed at improving the current situation of youth work and employment in
Vietnam as the country enters into a new phase of development.

1. Introduction
Although a considerable amount of information and data relating toyouth and employment does exist in the form of various surveys as well asother scattered sources within Vietnam, there has been no comprehensive
analysis of national-level data. Despite the seriousness of the youth unemployment and underemployment problem, there is limited information about work
experience and health outcomes associated with it for young people in Vietnam.
This paper is aimed at filling this gap. It is prepared with the belief that if weknow what improves outcomes for our youth, we can then put into place policies, programs and services that take advantage of existing opportunities while
avoiding some of the risks along the way. The following objectives are pursued
in brief.
• Provide scientific evidence of policy discourse and issues regarding youth
employment in Vietnam,87

Dang Nguyen Anh• Assess differentials in the level and patterns of youth work and employment,• Identify risk and protective factors during the school-to-work transition ofyoung people,• Examine the health risk behaviors of youth groups with different work
experience and employability, and• Draw conclusions and policy implications of the research findings for theformulation of the National Comprehensive Strategy on Youth and Adolescent Health in Vietnam.

2. Overview of Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam
In Vietnam, youth—persons aged 15–24—account for one-fourth of
the total population. This social demographic group made up 22 percent of thelabor force in 2003, with relatively equal proportions of women and men (Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs [MOLISA], 2004). They havegreat potential to build on the socio-economic successes of the past 20 years ofreforms. Youth have formed the backbone of Vietnam's economic successthroughout the decade. About two-thirds (67 percent) of youth aged 15–24
work on small family farms and in the informal sector—work characterized by
low quality, underemployment, insecurity and safety hazards (General Statistics
Office of Vietnam [GSO], 2002).
Since the Doi moi (renovation), which was officially introduced in
1986, Vietnam has shifted from a centrally–planned system to a socialist-oriented market economy. Measures were introduced to open up the economy to international markets. The policies called for a multi-sector economy, trade liberalization, foreign direct investment and other reforms. The rapid diversification of
economic activities has led to increased incomes and improved living conditions.
Real GDP growth has been achieved at 7–8 percent per annum since the 1990s.
The proportion of people with per capita expenditure under the poverty line
dropped dramatically by 30 percentage points in just over a decade (World
Bank, 2004). The market transition in Vietnam has brought increased job opportunities for the working population, of which young people form the majority.
The transition to a market economy in Vietnam involved a drastic

88Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

turn in the labor and job markets. It is important to note that these positive
results achieved from Doi moi would have had both direct and indirect effects
on employment, equity and social welfare. In spite of the new opportunities anddiversification that open up economic opportunities, a shift toward a market
economy also involves changes resulting in job losses and layoffs for many
workers. The transition places new constraints on young people who find themselves caught between old and new social norms and values. As a result, their
expectations and perceptions of work diverge. A good job is not just a source ofincome; it also provides economic standing, self-esteem, status and social capital. Unless girls find good jobs, their bargaining power in marriage and control
over their fertility will remain limited. In addition to skills and educational
achievement, the work participation of youth has significant implications fortheir development.
Employment has become a major concern for young people. Youthunemployment and underemployment have increased rather than decreased in
Vietnam (United Nations [UN], 2003). According to official data (MOLISA,
2004), the country’s youth unemployment rate was over 14 percent in 2003
with sharp gender and regional differentials. The age group 15–24 years old
forms the bulk of the unemployed young people (26 percent). Young people
aged 15–24 find it more difficult to get jobs than do adults (25 years of age andabove). For the country as a whole, youth in the labor force are twice as likely
to be unemployed than the adult population. Youth unemployment accounts for
45 percent of all unemployment in Vietnam. The high levels of unemployment
and underemployment in rural areas have resulted in out-migration from agricultural sectors to urban centers. Migrant youth may have special problems in
obtaining employment as they are more likely to leave school at early ages andenter low-paid and unskilled jobs.
However, the unemployment statistics do not reveal the severity ofthe situation. The large size of the youth labor force and the increase in thelabor age population continue to bring heavy employment pressures. The rate of
growth of employment is 2.5 percent per annum while the rate of growth of thelabor force is 3.3 percent per annum. The difference can be defined as new
additions to the unemployed population. The number of youth entering thelabor market is still estimated at 1.4 million each year. This does not include89

Dang Nguyen Anhthose still unemployed from the preceding year (International Labour Office[ILO], 2002). Young entrants into the labor market face severe competition infinding suitable job opportunities. At the heart of the problem is the quantityand quality of work available to young people in Vietnam today.
Many out-of-school youth are working to earn a living for their families in low paid work and petty trade. Apart from low productivity, a lack of job
opportunities can have significant social consequences. Experience from othercountries shows that unemployment can lead to a life of violence, drug abuse,vandalism, crime and other social problems. Early school leavers without regular
employment may turn to risky avenues for income and livelihoods such as prostitution and crime. Some become victims of HIV/AIDS and human trafficking.

90Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

It is important to look at unemployment rates for individuals at allages in addressing the labor force participation of youth. Using the most recent
population census data in Vietnam, Table 1 gives unemployment rates by sex
and age in 1999. The highest rates of unemployment are found among males
and females 15–19 years of age, followed by the age group of 20–24. Males are
relatively more likely to be unemployed than females in all age groups. Unemployment rates for people aged 15–19 are somewhat difficult to interpretbecause lower unemployment rates are associated with higher school attendance. However, the high rates shown in the table clearly indicate that young
people are seeking work opportunities and are often failing to find them.
The situation of underemployment is not encouraging. Underemployed workers are those who are employed but are willing and able to work
more. As shown in Table 2, the total number of underemployed workers
accounted for about 7 percent of the labor force nationwide. Rural workers are
more likely to be underemployed than urban workers (7.4 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively). Notably, the underemployment rates are highest for the
15–19 and 20–24 age groups, regardless of rural-urban differenrials. As
younger workers are more likely to be underemployed than older workers, thepolicy challenge for youth employment is to provide more job opportunities forunderemployed youth so as to help them work full time.
Throughout the process of Doi moi, significant policy efforts havebeen made by the Communist Party and the Government of Vietnam to address
problems related to employment in general, and youth employment in particular. Issues of youth work and employment are addressed within general laborand employment policies which aim to reduce the proportion of the unemployed in the economy. To this end, initiatives currently taken by the government to create employment for youth include direct investment to generate newjobs through various national socio-economic development programs, provisionof assitance in the form of loan credit, promotion of the human resources foryoung people, provision of boarding schools for ethnic minority youth,
enhanced universal education, and vocational training programs.
The government of Vietnam understands that investing in young people is investing in the future. As a part of the Socio-economic Development
Strategy for Vietnam (2001–2010), the Vietnam Youth Development Strategy by91

Dang Nguyen Anh2010 has outlined the government’s approach to tackling youth issues (Vietnam
Youth’s Union, 2003). The main objective of the strategy is to strengthen education and support for young people in Vietnam. The first phase identifies fivekey programs: (i) employment for youth; (ii) enhancing the education level andprofessional skills for youth; (iii) developing young scientific capability inorder to upgrade the science and technology qualifications of youth; (iv) fighting crime and social evils among young people; and (v) building up the politicalstance, revolutionary ethics, and socialist patriotism for young people. In addition to the Vietnam Youth Development Strategy, a number of other laws andpolicies are in place, focusing on youth development, employability andencouragement of support for young talents. They can be identified as the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS), the implementation of the New Enterprise Law, vocational training programs, and others which
aim directly or indirectly at entrepreneurship, vocational training, job andincome generation, and poverty reduction for young people.
Despite these sound policies and programs, Vietnam has been characterized by a high unemployment rate in urban areas, serious underemployment
in the countryside, a very high proportion of agricultural labor, a remarkably
low ratio of skilled labor, and a large amount of manual labor (ILO, 2002). Too
frequently, a lack of skills and opportunities force Vietnamese youth to accept
inadequate jobs. About 94 percent of the total youth population had no vocational and technical skills in 1999. Initial results from the Survey Assessment ofVietnamese Youth (SAVY) undertaken in late 2003 show that only 5 percent ofyoung people from ethnic minorities have ever had any vocational training,
compared to 21 percent of their Kinh majority counterparts (MOH et al., 2005).
Because of their geographical isolation, lower levels of education and training,
and limited off-farm opportunities, rural and ethnic minority youth have little
exposure to vocational training, employment opportunities, and job generation
initiatives.
Vietnam’s growth rates of the past twenty years of Doi moi have notyielded the expected quantity and quality of new jobs and stable employment.
There are many more new job seekers than the number of jobs created eachyear. To a certain extent, youth unemployment is a reflection of the overall
unemployment situation, which in turn is a reflection of the weakness of the92

Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

economy wherein the private sector is slowly developed. Although privatization
invites investment and growth, increased competition continues to force boththe state-owned and private enterprises to streamline their staff. The non-state
sector still plays an insignificant role in the rural economy, which is largely
dominated by agricultural production.
While competition among young people for decent jobs has been
increasing, there is a significant mismatch between the skills and knowledge ofyoung people and the demands of employers. Employers are usually hesitant tohire youth with no or little work experience. It is easier and cheaper to hireskilled adults than to provide inexperienced and untested young people withnew training. Where the work is skilled, recruitment is even more competitive.
Although academic degree holders are often not in great demand, appropriate
skills training is highly regarded by employers. The problem is exacerbated byseveral flaws of the current education and training system as well as the lack of
coordination between the educational and vocational training sector andemployment sector (MOLISA, 2004). Moreover, inadequate services on job
counseling further limit the ability of young people to make informed andappropriate career choices.

3. Descriptions of the Data Source
The present in-depth analysis examines relevant factors associatedwith employment of the Vietnamese youth. The importance of employment foryoung people for subsequent development as well as the central role of the family in raising children through the years of life has provided the rationale forundertaking such an analysis. We frame the analysis in terms of identifying andassessing factors associated with work status and employment experience ofyoung people. It is vital to differentiate the experience of young people, theirwork, and their relative positions in the labor market.
Much of the analysis below draws heavily from SAVY, which is oneof the first nationally representative surveys on a wide range of issues for Vietnamese youth (MOH et al., 2005). While it is impossible to establish time-ordercausality between outcome and independent variables due to the cross-sectional
nature of the SAVY data, results from bivariate analysis are a starting point for93

Dang Nguyen Anhshedding light on how youth employment experience differs depending on individual characteristics and familial conditions. Then, statistically associated factors are assessed using multivariate analysis techniques. The analysis will allow
us to control the confounding effects and identify factors that may prevent
young people from being employed, getting jobs, or receiving vocational training.
Despite its national coverage and representation, SAVY provides noinformation about working conditions, unpaid work, and time-use data, which
would allow us to explore youth employment in a more comprehensive fashion.
Data on communities were not collected by SAVY, except for the information
on type of current residence. It is important, therefore, that youth employment
patterns from SAVY be linked or compared with those obtained from earlier
surveys as well as from future surveys in order to assess changes in youth
employment in relation to the intensive market transitions
Using the risk and protection model for Vietnamese adolescents(Blum, 2004), two different sets of underlying factors can be defined as pertaining to youth work and employment. The first set is various individual characteristics including gender, age, ethnicity, marital status, education, health status,
and indicators of their transition to adulthood, such as experience of child laborand economic migration. In addition, the initiation of risk-taking behavior, suchas substance use, may lead youth to drop out of school and as a result may force
youth into the labor market. The second set of factors of concern is the parental
status and familial conditions that can influence youth employment and workrelated outcomes. At the family level, we are particularly interested in examining factors related to parents and households that affect the school-work transition and employability of youth. For example, many in Vietnam would argue
that high status of parents and family can lead to a better position for children in
the labor market. The research findings reported below will therefore provide
important background and identify factors for considering the basic policy
directions with regard to the linkages among youth employment, schooling,
health, and well-being.

94Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

4. Analysis Results and Discussion
4.1. Characteristics of youth work and employment
4.1.1. Paid work experience
The paid work participation rate of Vietnamese youth is presented inTable 3.

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Dang Nguyen Anh

The figures provide information on the mean age of respondents
when they entered their first job, in addition to showing the rates of labor force
participation across subgroups at the time of the survey and over the lives of
respondents. From the table, we can see that the age at which young people inVietnam start working for pay varies with individual characteristics. Overall,entry into the labor market comes at a relatively young age (17.4 years). Males
and those currently married begin paid employment at an earlier age than theirfemale and never-married counterparts. The results suggest that single youth
stay at school for a longer duration of time before leaving for work.
The mean age of beginning paid work increases significantly with thelevels of education, suggesting that the lower the education, the earlier young
people start to work. It is likely that school dropouts have to support themselves
and their families in a paid job. Children who worked when they were young
had to leave school and thus have a lower level of educational attainment. The
demand to work for family survival and the cost of education are key reasonsfor dropping out of school and entering the labor market.
The prevalence of substance use is measured by the proportion ofyouth who have ever used the substances. Additional information collected by
SAVY revealed that 41 percent of the survey respondents reported trying alcohol or smoking, although only 0.5 percent reported use of heroin and illicit
drugs. There is, however, no correlation between the age at which young people
began working and their substance use and health condition. Young people withpoor health, physically or mentally, tended to join the labor market at the sameage as others. Compared to their peers, young people having premarital sex
started working relatively late.
As the results show, youth who are members of ethnic minorities tend
to start working earlier than Kinh people (16 and 18 years, respectively). As
expected, young people from families with low economic status began working
at a much earlier age. However, the mean ages for beginning work are not significantly different between those living in families with or without both parents. Young people who are only children tend to enter the labor market at alater age (18 years).
Reflecting social status, the occupations of the parents can influence
the age at which their children begin to work. Children of a professional start96Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

working much later compared with children of unskilled or agricultural workers(20 and 17 years, respectively). Children of unemployed fathers also started towork later, possibly because of fewer job opportunities. The age that young
people begin to work increases from rural areas to towns and to cities. Youngpeople living in rural areas started working at younger ages than urban youth.
The results suggest that in the countryside young people are more likely to faceeconomic hardships and drop out of school. These results also reflect the movement of young educated people from the countryside to towns and cities fortheir higher education.
Turning to the youth experience of paid work, the results show that35 percent of the respondents worked at the time SAVY was taken in 2003.
Also, more than half (55 percent) of the total respondents had worked for pay atsome time during their lives. The patterns of respondents who had ever worked
and were currently working are fairly similar across individual and familial
characteristics. Generally, the proportion of youth who had worked before wasabout 20 percentage points higher than the the proportion who were working at
the time of the survey. This suggests that some young people had started working for pay at early ages but left the labor market for a number of reasons. The
lower level of currently working youth may also indicate the low capacity of
job creation and poor absorption of young workers in the formal labor market.
If seasonal or informal work had been asked and included in the data, the levelof working youth might have been higher. In fact, some young people holdpart-time work for pay while they are still in school, but they may not report
this as work. To some extent, the measurement of work may also be influenced
by what youth consider to be work. Many young people who work casually in
the informal economy do not actually think of themselves as “working.”
Youth work differs significantly by gender, age and marital status.
The level of labor force participation is higher for the married group, andincreases dramatically with age. Conversely, the labor force participation ofyouth declines with increases in general education. In other words, leaving
school at an early age pushes young people into the labor market. Although thelevel of youth employment is high for the most educated group (college/university level), it is notable that only half of this group was working at the time of
SAVY. The rest of them might still have been searching for suitable jobs. The

97

Dang Nguyen Anh

results indicate some difficulties in skill mismatching for university graduatesin the present job market.
Not surprisingly, a very high proportion of young people reporting
economic migration or child labor experience have ever worked for pay (Table3). Moreover, two notable findings emerge with some particular subgroups.
First, youth’s experiences with risk-taking behaviors, such as substance use or
premarital sex, are associated with higher rates of work. One reason might bethat young people who leave school and begin to work may be more independent from their families. This could allow them more freedom to experimentwith substances and sex. Second, a relatively higher proportion of young people
with poor health work for pay. Why these associations exist is not clear; however, it is evident that education is protective against a range of health risk behaviors. Conversely, those who are at risk for early school leaving and early work
may also be at risk for a range of other health compromising experiences. Poor
health, substance use, and initiation of premarital sex can operate as harmful
factors for youth’s exposure to risk at work and during their transition to adulthood. More research needs to be directed at untangling the complex relationshipbetween these factors and job outcomes.
The results show that young people living in families where both parents are living are less likely to be in paid employment. The higher the economic status of the family, the less likely are youth to work and vice versa. Likewise, children of unemployed fathers with many children are more likely to be
employed than those whose fathers have a job and have fewer children. These
results are reasonable given that the economic hardships of families push young
people into the labor market.
Work experience of young people is also affected by whether they
live in urban centers or rural areas. Compared to rural youth, those living incities or towns are more likely to participate in paid work at higher participation
rates. Most of this difference is attributed to the urban opportunities to work for
pay and for youths to earn cash income for themselves and for their families.
4.1.2. Occupation and industry
We now focus on occupations and industry that young people reported in the survey. The information reveals sectors where young people are work-98Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

ing for pay. The analysis refers to working youth. About 46 percent of the
respondents, who reported not working for pay at the time of SAVY, areexcluded in this analysis. In terms of occupation, two-thirds (68 percent) ofworking youth fall within the occupational categories of “simple” jobs (i.e.,
unskilled labor in agriculture or non-agriculture activities). Trained handicraft
workers make up the second-largest classification of young workers.
Vietnam is primarily a rural economy with 75 percent of people living in rural areas and agriculture remaining a dominant economic sector. This isreflected in the pattern of youth employment as reported in SAVY. Figure 1

99

Dang Nguyen Anhdemonstrates that a majority of youth in Vietnam is engaged in farming and thatmost young workers lack skills. Their work is the least likely to be recognized
as valuable as skilled workers and diminishing their income. This suggests that
more resources are needed to engage young people in skill-training, and to create jobs.
As shown in Figure 2, the majority (57 percent) of working youth
engaged in the labor force are self-employed, mainly in farming, while 13 percent of working youth are involved in small family enterprises. Additional
information from the SAVY data reveals that two-thirds of the self-employedyouth worked as unskilled agricultural workers at the time of the survey. They
seem to be on the low end of the pay scale and are faced with the most disadvantage and hardship. The remainders of working youth are classified in otherinstitutional sectors.
The figures show that private sector and joint-venture sectors eachaccounts for less than 6 percent of working youth, suggesting that limited
opportunities are open to young workers. Even the government sector provides
only 7 percent of jobs for currently working youth. It appears that various benefits associated with government work—cash income, skill development, social
status, experience, and development opportunities—are not open to most young
people today. As reforms to the public and private sector continue, the rate ofstate employment for youth is likely to decline further.
4.1.3. School and work
School in addition to work is an important activity for young people.
Education is important for both human development and life skill development.
However, as youths are often the main sources of social security and strong
labor for their families, parents deploy young people for work. According to the
SAVY results, 20 percent of school drop-outs leave school as a result of thelabor demand for supporting the family. The SAVY data reveal that only 40
percent of youth were in school at the time of the survey, including those at college or university. About 35 percent were out of school but were working.
Interestingly, 25 percent of the respondents were neither attending school nor
working. A much higher proportion of females (30 percent) than males (19.5
percent) belongs to this category (Figure 3).

100Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

The large proportion of young people not working and out of school
is a concern from a policy perspective. Why are the youth neither working nor
studying? Does a lack of opportunities for employment put them in such a situation? Does the demand for work in the household keep them from attending
school? According to SAVY data, about 4 percent of the respondents neverwent to school, and 20 percent of the out-of-school youth reported that they left
school because of obligations to work for family survival.
We next identify the characteristics of the three different groups ofyouth as reported in SAVY: at school, at work, and neither studying nor working. Table 4 presents the distribution of the three groups in school-to-work transitions. The group of currently in-school youth includes mainly single, female
teenagers aged 14–17, with secondary education. Very few in this group had
migrated for economic reasons, although about 46 percent had experience withchild labor. Members of this group have better health, lower risk-taking behaviors, and live in families with relatively higher economic status. Those in school
are more likely to live with living parents, and their fathers are more likely to be
professionals.
In contrast, the group of out-of-school youth who are not working
tends to be young adult males aged 18–25. Most have a primary or lower sec-101

Dang Nguyen Anh

ondary education, although a number of them hold college or university
degrees. The high proportion of college and university graduates in this groupindicates a mismatch between current human resources and labor market
demands in Vietnamese society. Compared to their counterparts in the firstgroup, members of this group are more likely to have migrated in search of102

Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

work. A greater proportion of them live in low-income families with only one
living parent. Their fathers tend either to be unemployed or to work as unskilledfarmers in rural areas.
The third group includes youth who already dropped out or finishedschool, and who at the time of the survey were working for pay. Members of
this group share mixed characteristics with those of the other two groups. In
particular, they are mainly single females of older ages who generally have a
primary or lower secondary education. Many young people with paid employment have migrated for economic reasons. A small proportion of them haveexperienced substance use and premarital sex.
Employed youth tend to live in families with average economic status; their fathers are more likely to be unemployed or to work in low-skilledjobs. Like the in-school group, and compared to the second group, more members of this group currently reside in urban areas than in rural ones.
Compared with their counterparts and especially with in-school
youth, those who are not in school or in employment have many more risks andmany fewer protective factors than their peers. Youth without links to social
institutions at school and work may be less protected in the transition fromschool to work. The fact that one out of four youth are in this category should
be a concern for policy makers.
4.2. Youth employability
4.2.1. Current status of youth employability
The concept of employability contains two major aspects: the competence and skills for the current market (or the supply side) and the access toemployment opportunities (on the demand side) (see Appendix 1). It must beemphasized that there are several different youth labor markets. SAVY provides information on job search and vocational training for young people as partof an examination of employability of Vietnamese youth.
Table 5 displays the rates of job search and vocational training among
young people as reported in SAVY. Of the total sample, about 15 percent
reported that they were looking for jobs at the time of the survey. There are no
significant differences in the rates of job search across gender, marital status,and ethnicity. The likelihood that young people are engaged in job search103Dang Nguyen Anh

increases with age, number of siblings in the household, and levels of educational attainment. Notably, 31 percent of youth with college/university degrees
were looking for employment at the time of the SAVY, suggesting that there
may be some weaknesses in systems for education, training, and placement.
Although there are also factors on the demand side, there is a general consensus
that the skills taught and knowledge learned are mismatched in Vietnam with104

Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

those needed by employers in the labor market. This continues to pose a problem for young people. Most youth want to go to university and see higher education as the ticket to the future. Over 90 percent of the current school children
want to enter university, as reported by SAVY; however, enterprises andemployers are not committed to employ them as they tend to value experience
over academic coursework. More and more jobs today do not require an academic education. Unless changes are made, this will continue to be a big problem in the future.
The SAVY results also show that higher proportions of young people
with poor health or risk-taking behaviors look for jobs as compared to those
without such behaviors. Not surprisingly, young people living with only one
parent are more likely to search for jobs, and the demand for employment
among youth decreases with increasing family economic status and father’soccupational status. A relatively higher proportion of urban youth look for jobs
compared to their counterparts living in towns or rural areas.
Turning to job training, 19 percent of the respondents have been
involved in vocational training with 13.4 percent of the total sample having
completed such training and 5.6 percent in the process of being trained. As
shown in Table 5, there are again significant differences in the rates of job
training by gender and marital status. However, a fairly small proportion of ethnic minority youth received job training as compared to the Kinh youth. This isprobably due to limited access of these groups to training facilities. Other
groups facing difficulties in gaining access to vocational training are: those
aged 14–17 years old, young people with little education, youth who have beenin child labor, those from poor families, and rural youth.
Of those who had received vocational training, two-thirds (67 percent) found a job with the skills they were provided. One-third (33 percent)could not find the job for which they had received training. The SAVY data do
not indicate whether these young people already had a job when they received
the training. However, the data can show the varying experiences in youth
employability. The better-employed youth include those of older ages (18–25)
and those with primary or lower secondary education. They are more likely tobe Kinh youth and living in rural families with low or average economic status.
Noteworthy is that the rate of employability among children of farmers is high-105Dang Nguyen Anhest. These results are not surprising as they reflect the type of work and job
training that young people receive. As already mentioned, rather than become
unemployed, these young people become self-employed or work in small family enterprises. The SAVY data do not, however, specify the types and contents
of vocational training or the actual skills and knowledge youth received.
4.2.2. Youth’s aspirations and attitude toward work
Despite the severity of the other challenges facing the young generation, 50 percent of young people identify employment as the most important
issue relating to their future. Two-fifths (41 percent) of SAVY respondents recommended that the government’s highest priority should be increasing opportunities for jobs in terms of improving the lives of youth. Education alone is clearly not the answer for young people’s successful transition from school to work.
It is worth mentioning that the aspirations and attitude toward work
among the young are not significantly different for different groups defined byindividual and family characteristics (results not shown). This suggests thatyoung people today, regardless of their differences, are all concerned about
employment opportunities and decent jobs. It is important that more efforts
should be put into job creation in Vietnam by more effectively linking education and training to economic growth and the global economy.
4.2.3. Youth schooling, employment, and health
Given the cross-sectional nature of the SAVY data, the present analysis examines the correlation—not the causal relationship—between employment and health. Specifically, what is the relationship between being out ofschool, unemployed, or employed with a range of health risk behaviors such as
substance use, premarital sex, and contraceptive practice? To the best of ourknowledge, this is the first study to look at the links among these variables.
The results in Table 6 indicate that young females are less likely to be
exposed to risks than are young males. Youth who are in school are less likely
to experience substance use, premarital sex, and poor health. The pattern is similar for young men and young women. The results suggest that schooling is a
protective factor. Unfortunately, the sample was too small to look at differencesin contraceptive use.

106Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

Young males who are currently looking for jobs are most likely to be
exposed to health risk behaviors. The level of substance use among male youth
is double that among female youth. Those who are unemployed or who arelooking for jobs tend to experience premarital sex and poor health. Likewise,
male migrants are likely to be most exposed to these risks. In general, it
becomes clear that migrant youth, the unemployed, those looking for jobs, andthose who are out of school are most vulnerable. Effective measures must be
taken to safeguard these youth groups from health risks and enhance theirdevelopment.
4.3. Factors associated with youth employment and employability: Multivariate results
Although the above descriptive analysis has partly described relationships between youth characteristics and employment outcomes, our main goalin multivariate analyses is to identify key factors associated with youth employment and to gauge their net effects, controlling for the confounding factors.

107

Dang Nguyen Anh

Two main aims are involved here. The first is to assess whether there
are systematic variations in employment outcomes among different groups ofyoung people. The second is to better understand how school status affects
work experience. To do this the analysis will explore the relationships between
employment and other factors. We ask whether the effects of individual characteristics are shaped by family status, particularly that of the fathers. In this sec-108

Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

tion, due to space limitations, we present the regression estimates of the multivariate analysis. The model specifications are presented in detail in Appendix 2.
Readers unfamiliar with regression techniques might wish to skip the figuresand proceed to the below summary of the findings.
Table 7 summarizes the results of a series of regression estimates that
identify factors associated with the probabilities of work, job search, and job
training among Vietnamese youth as reported in SAVY. Estimated odd ratios
are used with levels of statistical significance chosen at p<0.05. A value of odd
ratios greater than 1 indicates that members of the sub-group of youth have ahigher likelihood of work, job search, and job training. On the other hand, avalue under 1 suggests that those belonging to the sub-group have lower probabilities to work for pay, to look for jobs, and to receive job training.
The probability to work is higher for males than for females. The
probability is significantly increased with the age of youths but decreases withhigher levels of education. Notably consistent with the bivariate analysis, thegreatest odds ratio of those young people with university degrees currently
looking for jobs suggests that this group of university graduates represents a
hidden unemployment problem. The supply of academic degree holders has
actually exceeded the demand of employers and society.
Ethnicity and types of place of residence also significantly affect theprobability to work: Kinh youth and urban youth were more likely to be in
employment. The patterns of effects also show that young people who havebeen in child labor and who have migrated for economic opportunities are more
likely to be currently working. Perhaps early childhood work and previous
experience of economic migration can provide young people with labor market
practice. They are more likely to currently work or look for jobs, which could
subsequently lead to increased work experience, making it easier to findemployment.
Among the covariates describing the family characteristics of theyoung person, the multivariate results show that economic status is negatively
associated with the probability to work. The higher the status, the lower the
likelihood for youth to work, other things being equal. For example, young people living in families with high economic status are 30 percent less likely towork for pay than those from families with low economic status. This suggests

109

Dang Nguyen Anhthat youth from better-off families tend to be in higher education and hence not
at work. The results also show that living with or without both living parents is
not a significant predictor of youth employment. Other aspects such as numberof siblings do not show a significant influence on work in the multivariate
results.
Closer examination of data on youth employment shows that males
are less likely to be looking for a job, suggesting the gender gap in the labormarket. Among indicators of school-to-work transition and transition to adulthood, the effect of marital status is significant with single persons being more
likely to be job seekers. The probability that a young person is seeking employment increases significantly with age and education. Young people having earlier experience with child labor and economic migration are more likely to lookfor jobs, though many of them are currently working. To some extent, theobtained results have suggested that both underemployment and demand forbetter jobs are always primary concerns of young people today.
Interestingly, there is no significant statistical difference in young
people’s probability to look for jobs by paternal occupation and place of residence. In general, where the household is located is not an important factor in
determining the likelihood of job search. These results point to the high demand
for work and suggest that youth unemployment has become a critical problem
in society for rural and urban regions alike.
The effects of individual and familial factors on job training aresomewhat different from their effects on youth work and job search. Controlling for other factors, gender difference in job training disappears. While thelikelihood of receiving job training increases with age, it declines with higher
education. This may be due to the fact that youth in general education are lesslikely to receive job training, whereas those who drop out of school are more
likely to seek job training.
Not surprisingly, family economic status is strongly associated with
job training. The relationship proves to be linear in that the higher the status, thehigher the probability of a youth’s receiving job training. Children of non-farming fathers have a higher probability to be trained vocationally and hence have ahigher chance of being employed. Children of farmers are likely to find jobs on
the farm that do not require outside training. The effects are statistically strong-110Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

ly significant. Except for the group of youth living in towns, there are no differences in access to job training opportunities between rural and urban youths.

5. Conclusion and Policy Implications
The evidence that rigorously quantifies youth employment and theirschool-to-work transition is quite limited. The strength of the analysis presented
here is twofold: First, we present a comprehensive analysis linking youth
employment to schooling and employment to health. Second, the regression
analysis, although very limited in scope as is any multivariate model, does
attempt to capture some of the complexity of the factors affecting youth work
status and employability. The results are thus more robust than any bivariate
analysis performed in previous descriptive studies. The obtained results haveconfirmed many of the factors included in recent nationwide policy discourse
regarding youth employment.
The market transition in Vietnam involved a drastic turn in young
people’s transition from school to work. Today, Vietnamese youth generally
enter the labor force out of economic necessity in order to help reduce the vulnerability of their households and their own livelihoods. Our analysis explored
the aspect that different individual and family conditions lead to different workand health-related outcomes among Vietnamese youth. The significance of anumber of important factors—such as gender, age, education, ethnicity, andfamily economic status—suggests that these factors are strong determinants ofyouth employment. To a large extent, they define the supply-side structure of
the youth labor market. Certain disadvantaged groups of youth such as single
females, the relatively young, and those living with one living parent in poorfamilies are more likely to look for jobs today. Being either unemployed orunderemployed, these groups of youth wish to improve their situation by looking for employment and suitable jobs.
The results of our analyses, both bivariate and multivariate, strongly
suggest that family serves as an important factor in determining the youth
employment experience. In fact, the family in which a young person lives is thestrongest predictor of his or her future in the job market. The significant effectsof paternal occupation, parental availability, and family economic status are111Dang Nguyen Anhnotable in the analytical results. The probability to work is reduced when young
people live in better-off families. Likelihood to receive job training is enhanced
when the father is in a professional or technical job, when the youth belongs to
the Kinh group, and when the youth is residing in urban centers. Families canprovide significant social and financial supports to enable the favorable transition from school to work for young people. All these factors combine to makethe placement and promotion of their employment easier in the labor market.
The strength of the analysis is also reflected in the statistically significant effects of factors reflecting young people’s transition from school to workand to adulthood. Young people’s risk-taking behavior has also associated closely with their work status. One piece of evidence is the fact that large proportionsof unemployed youth try smoking and alcoholic drinking (which are acceptablebehaviors among adults) and that they begin to initiate these behaviors during
their school-to-work transition. Specifically, out-of-school youth, migrant youth,
and those who are unemployed or are job-seekers are most likely to be exposedto health risk behaviors. This means that in the near future, the prevalence ofrisk-taking behaviors and subsequent health outcomes will probably increase
with youth leaving school or the parental home and engaging more in work forpay. To prevent such a trend, effective measures and information that are strong
enough to change their attitudes and behavior should be reinforced.
The overall results of the present analysis suggest that not only will ascientific study of the subject help improve our knowledge of the determinantsof youth employment, but it will also provide us with reliable evidence todesign policies to assist young people in today’s labor market. In some ways,
the study results confirm and strengthen the current policy directions concerning youth employment. Following are policy implications drawn from the findings within this paper.
First, the youth is a diverse social demographic group with different
characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, ethnic origin, levels of education, siblings and parents, family conditions, and place of residence. The conventional understanding of youth as a homogenous group is no longer relevant:
it is imperative for policy and program planners to avoid basing their decisions
on such a misunderstanding. Policies must be therefore specific enough to meetthe needs of each of these groups. The formulation of policies for youth, includ-112

Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

ing employment policies, should recognize that young people (between the agesof 14 and 25) include different social and demographic groups, have different
needs, and are shaped by different sets of factors in their school-to-work transition. Their pathways to employment and health development are also diverse.
Second, given the disproportion of youth currently working in smallfamily business and self-employed in the agricultural sector, it is important tocoordinate with local authorities and communities to help young people startand improve their own businesses. This includes the generation of job opportunities through small and medium enterprise development. For example, traditional craft production in the Red River Delta provinces should be developed
and linked to international export markets to create proper jobs with adequate
incomes, ensuring non-farming income for rural youth and their families. It isalso important to make it easy to start and run enterprises through training andcredit to provide more and better jobs for young women and men. As young
people are often the only source of social security of their families, the need ofparents to deploy their young children to work is salient and critical. Too often
availability of jobs is limited to the most educated and urban residents, sidelining young females, ethnic minorities, and rural youths. Reducing socio-economic differences should be a policy priority. Efforts aimed at poverty reduction, employment promotion, and income generation for families can limit theneed for children to seek economic livelihoods.
Third, enhancing the employability of Vietnamese youth first requires
the strengthening of the macro-level linkages between the education system andthe labor market. Education and academic degrees are only a means to an end
and are not an end in themselves. The need to improve the quality of education,
as well as the need to adapt curricula in schools and vocational centers to produce the appropriate skills and job experience as demanded by employers andcompetitiveness of the labor market, has already been discussed. Employability
requires new sets of appropriate skills which are usable in labor markets. In
order to address these issues, it will be necessary to build capacity and accountability of employment services and job counseling and to improve the linkagesof job training to labor market needs.
Fourth, minimizing skill mismatches and matching skills to demand isa key to improving youth employability. The high proportion of university

113Dang Nguyen Anhgraduates currently looking for jobs and the fact that only over half of them arein a job with the training they received indicate the huge gap between supply
and demand for education, training, and experience in the rapidly changing
labor market in Vietnam. A central policy issue is the mismatch between the
expectations and reality of the labor market. At present, university educationand obtaining academic degrees remain highly desired by young people andtheir parents as the ticket to the future. Although practical skills rather than textbook knowledge are required in today’s labor market, vocational training is perceived as being less prestigious because it does not help young people tobecome state officials or to achieve upward mobility in the society. As a result,
those with university and higher education are more likely to be unemployed orwork at jobs unsuitable to their education. The labor market tends to value
experience over academic qualifications. Policy makers should consider lowering the investment in expanding or constructing new colleges and universities.
Effective messages, better information, and job orientation should therefore beprovided to young people, their peers, and their families in order to change attitudes and behaviors about education and training.
Fifth, effectively addressing youth employment also needs a comprehensive approach to overcome specific risks increasingly faced by certain disadvantaged groups of youth. Issues related to vulnerability and health of unemployed, migrant, or out-of-school youth are key policy concerns. In this regard,
the issue of gender is particularly interesting as the results show the relatively
higher health risks for young males. While it is necessary to provide special
support to help raise the status of these disadvantaged groups of youth in thelabor market, it is very important to reduce harmful aspects of their exposure to
health risks. In the current context, the family and its support system—both
financial and human—is essential for young people who are leaving school andin the process of entering the labor market.

114Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

References

Blum, R. 2004. The Risk and Protection Model for Vietnamese Adolescents: A Framework for SAVY Analysis. Hanoi: World Heath Organization and Ministry of Health,Vietnam.
Committee for Population, Family and Children (CPFC) and Population Reference
Bureau (PRB). 2003. Adolescents and Youth in Vietnam. Hanoi.
Dang, N. A. 2004. “The Population of Adolescents and Adolescent Reproductive Health:
From Characteristics to Policy Directions.” Paper presented at the First Public
Health Association Conference, 14–16 Dec, 2004. Hanoi.
General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO). 2002. Vietnam Population and Housing
Census 1999: Monograph on Labor and Employment in Vietnam. Hanoi: Transportation Publishing House.
International Labour Office (ILO). 2002. “Employment for Vietnamese Youth: Situationand Solution.” Paper presented at the ILO/Japan Tripartite Regional Meeting onYouth Employment in Asia and the Pacific, 27 Feb–1 Mar, 2002. Bangkok.
Mensch, B. S.; N. A. Dang; and H. C. Wesley. 2000. Adolescents and Social Change in
Vietnam. Hanoi: Institute of Sociology, and Population Council.
Mensch, B. S.; H. C. Wesley; and N. A. Dang. 2003. “Adolescents in Vietnam: Looking
beyond Reproductive Health.” Studies in Family Planning 34, No. 4: 249–262.
Ministry of Health (MOH), General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO), World HealthOrganization (WHO), and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). 2005. The
Survey Assessment of Vietnamese Youth. Hanoi: Ministry of Health.
Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA). 2004. Labor-Employment in Vietnam 1996–2003. Center for Informatics, MOLISA. Hanoi: The Publishing House of Social Labor.
Survey Assessment on Vietnamese Youth (SAVY). 2004. Draft SAVY Report. Hanoi:
Ministry of Health, and World Health Organization.
United Nations. 2003. “Challenges to Youth Employment in Vietnam.” Discussion
Paper No. 3. Hanoi: United Nations.
World Bank. 2004. Vietnam Development Report 2004: Poverty. Joint Report of theGovernment of Vietnam and Donors, Consultative Group Meeting, December 2–3,
2003. Hanoi.
Vietnam Youth’s Union (VYU). 2003. Vietnam’s Youth Development Strategy by 2010.

115

Dang Nguyen Anh(Issued as an attachment to Decision 70/2003/QD-TTg approved by the Prime Minister on 29 April, 2003). Hanoi.

116Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

Appendix 1: Key Concepts of Employment in this Paper

Employment: According to Article 13, Chapter II of the Labour Code of Vietnam, “any working activities which generate income and are not prohibited by laws are recognized as employment.” Employment can be defined in
the forms of: (1) employment which is paid in cash or in kind or by mutual help, (2) self-employment to earn income for oneself, or (3) activities of
production, business and service for one’s own family and no wage orsalary is received.
Employed: Employed are all persons aged 15 and over in the labor force andthose who are defined as being involved in one or more of the above-mentioned forms of employment in the last seven days. Employed youth referto those aged 15–24 who are involved in employment in the labor force.
Employability: This concept refers to the ability of a person to be employed
given his/her demand for jobs, skills, training, and capability to work. The
concept of employability contains two major aspects: the competence andthe access to employment opportunities. Vocational training is usually ameans to help young people to achieve their career goals. Youth employability relates to the ability of young people in obtaining jobs in the labormarket.
Unemployed: Unemployed are all persons aged 15 and over who were not
employed during the last seven days and (1) had actively looked for workand (2) had been available. Because of lack of skills, and the hurdle associated with obtaining the first job, the level of youth unemployment has
always been higher than the rate of general unemployment.
Underemployment: The state of employed persons who were employed but
worked less than 36 hours in the last seven days and would have been
available for work if the job had been available.
Labor force: Labor force or economically active population includes all people
who are at age 15 or above and are employed, and those who are not
employed but able to work and have a demand for a job. In this regard,
those outside the labor force refer to the economically inactive populationthat includes all people who are aged 15 or above but who are excluded117Dang Nguyen Anhfrom the employed component and from the unemployed.
Working age people: People at the working age outside the labor force (equivalent to economically inactive population at the working age) include all
people who are of working age (men aged from 15 to 60 and women from15 to 55) and are excluded from the employed component and from theunemployed.
Economically inactive people: People who are economically inactive include
those who are going to school, are serving as housekeepers for their own
families, are old or ailing for a long time, are handicapped, or are unable to
work.

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Youth Work and Employment in Vietnam

Appendix 2: Model Descriptions of Multivariate Analysis

Three observed outcomes (work, employment, and vocational training) can be treated as dependent variables for inclusion in the multivariate
regression models.
The first variable indicates whether or not the respondent was working for pay at the time of the survey. The second dependent variable is whether
the respondent was looking for a job, which reflects the access to the job market
among youth. The third work-related variable indicates whether the respondent
received any vocational/job training. This variable allows us to compare twogroups of young people: those who have received some form of vocational
training and those who have not.
As such, all three variables are binary; they are coded 1 with a positive response and 0 with a negative response. The independent variables may beclassified into the following two groups: measures of socioeconomic characteristics of the individual youth and those of the family. A macro-level factor, suchas type of current place of residence, works as a control variable in the statistical models. The analysis is applied to all surveyed young people who wereinterviewed in the Survey Assessment on Vietnamese Youth (SAVY).
Because the dependent variables are binary, logistic regression models can be used. The model to be estimated for each measure of work-related
behaviors can be specified as follows:log [p/(1-p)] = a + ßiXi +εi,

(1)

where

• log [p/(1-p)] is the log odds of the health care behavior, which
represents the dependent variable,• a is the intercept,• ß is the estimated regression coefficient,• X is the independent variable whose effect is examined, and• ε is the regression disturbance term.
iii

The variables included in the model represent the effect of a wide
range of factors influencing youth work and employment. We assume that Xi
are statistically exogenous toεi so that equation (1) would produce consistent119

estimates of the ßi as well as their standard errors. This is a strong and potentially objectionable assumption. For categorical variables, a positive coefficientindicates an increase in the log odds for the particular category relative to a reference category, while a negative coefficient indicates decreased log odds. By
exponentiating the coefficients we obtain estimates of the relative odds (oddratios) associated with a particular category of a covariate of interest. We use z
test to assess the significance of the impact of individual variables on the odds
of being employed, looking for jobs, or receiving vocational training as
opposed to the reference category. Using the SPSS/Win, we have estimated themodels using the above-described equation (1).

120

Chapter 5
Sustainable Education Development under
Globalization, and the Reforms of Teachingand Learning Methods in Teacher Training
Nguyen Thi Phuong Hoa

Abstract
Beginning with some considerations about the relationship between globalization and education, the particular significance of the tertiary education sector for a developing society
like that in Vietnam is addressed. A glance at the Vietnamese record of educational
reforms in general and in tertiary education in particular reveals considerable successes
as well as huge challenges. While reform needs and reform goals are scarcely controversial, the basic problem of all reform attempts is how to achieve sustainable development of
the educational system. In order to launch a proven and sustainable reform scheme, we
recommend an action research approach. Some strategic starting points are given combining the approach of self learning reform with research methods. This combination promises an improvement of the scientific level of teacher training institutions in their core tasks,
i.e. providing students continual encouragements and innovative learning abilities.

1. Education in the Context of Globalization
The term “globalization” was first used in social science and wasfound for the first time in Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1961. Since 1990, after
socialism collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Cold War ended, the process of
economic globalization has been developing rapidly and the term has continued
to gain popularity.
Though the terminology of globalization began to be used as late as
mentioned above, the sign of globalization process was appeared as early as the
15th century—a time of numerous exploration cruises, of which a well known
example is the first cruise around the world of Ferdinand Magellan, who discovered trade routes among the Asian, American, and African continents. Mod-

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ern globalization is known as an increasingly international integration in all
fields of economics, culture and society. It has impacts on every individual,
society, organization, and state. Technological progress, especially new technologies in telecommunication, and transportation as well as free trade policies
in international trade are main reasons for its dissemination. Theodore Levitt(1925–2006), a German immigrant who was a professor in Harvard University,
was the first to provide a definition of globalization from the viewpoint of economic policy makers in “The Globalization of Markets” in 1983.
From an economic viewpoint, globalization is characterized by a setof changes in economic structure, leading to basic changes in international labor
allocation in recent years. It results in rapid growth of the global economy.
Globalization can be described with the five following factors.
• New technologies, especially computer technology and transportation systems, rationalized at the highest level, have opened new opportunities tomeet the demand for goods and services all over the world.
• Because opportunities also mean pressure, what were independent activities of each nation in the past have been narrowed down and replaced by
the activities of international corporations, who are considered as global
players. These corporations choose to invest in the locations where they
can get the most benefits. Their investment decision does not depend on
the viewpoint of the nation they invest in.
• Therefore, an international financial system appears. Billions of US dollars
can be transferred through this system in a few seconds without any
national control or management. The independent actors are now thelargest economies in the world.
• The global labor allocation process enters a new period in which the labor
force is supplied to the market where the supply and demand relation ismost convenient. This results in the direct competition in labor supply
among countries and regions, for instance, between the European and the
Asian countries. The traditional production, agriculture production, andnatural resource exploitation have all fallen into global competition where
each country can have its own impact in certain conditions.
• A final factor is the appearance of information and telecommunication
technologies a few decades ago. They have become innovative sectors

122Sustainable Education Development under Globalization,……

which strongly spurred the growth of the global economic system.
Modern science marks a new step in human history. Intellectual andtechnological innovations are achievements of modern sciences; and as such, tomeet the requirements of globalization, all the countries, including the mostdeveloped ones, need to have broad and deep scientific knowledge and appliedexperience. The capability to understand modern sciences as well as the ability
to develop these sciences further are basic conditions to modernize the society(Evers et al., 2004).
All of the above characteristics of globalization show that economics
is the field in which globalization happens most strongly. However, globalization brings much more than economic impacts to a nation. Actually, all fields ofpolitics are affected by globalization. Furthermore, the development of culture
and society follow global trends.
Although the above development trends are still new and at their
beginning steps, all these trends are indispensable. All countries must follow
this development model, regardless of their current development level. Any
country which goes against this model—even partly—must pay a high price.
Such a country’s natural resources will become exhausted and the country willlag behind desperately. This goes especially for countries which are currently
prosperous thanks to their rich natural resources but which are not willing tointegrate their traditional values into global trends. For all countries, the time toadapt to this model is dwindling. Urgency is particularly high for the developing countries, which have to take fast reform and strive for sustainable results
simultaneously. In the current globalization context, developing countries thatwant to modernize will no longer be able to apply the old European development model, which required decades—amounting to centuries—to move fromagricultural production, to industrial production, to a service society, and thento the knowledge society based on electronic information and telecommunication technology. Now, emerging countries have to develop all fields at the sametime, prioritizing the preconditions of knowledge production (Cetto, 2006).
With this understanding, the relationship between education and successful modernization under the context of globalization becomes clear. This
relation has been the central topic in the theory of human capital (Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2002). The theory123

Nguyen Thi Phuong Hoa

proves that investment in education and training increases the economic productivity of the labor force. For developing countries in the context of the globalizing world, improving the simple labor skills is not enough because under the
impact of changes in the international division of labor, some professions will
disappear or change significantly. Therefore, the labor in the new context ofglobalization must, through education, be equipped with new skills and capabilities. Moreover, although developing countries undergoing cultural and socialchanges will cope with many difficulties in the integration process, these difficulties can be basically addressed by education. The theory of social capital
explains this situation in detail. A publication in 2002 by Putnam (Putnam,2002) —the most influential theorist of the social capital theory—indicates thatsocial capital is constituted of social organizing capabilities comprising trust,norms, and cooperation. These are the main elements for societies to improvetheir capability to act in their parts and as a whole. For developing countries
and countries who are stepping into the developed country community, investment in education and training is the basic material of the knowledge economy.
Under the challenges of globalization, that material will become more and moremeaningful (Temple, 2000).
The analysis of the relation between education and economic development reveals that all countries that want to achieve continuous social
progress must be brave enough to apply a strong investment policy for education and training. While the western developed countries experienced many
generations before they had developed their self-organizing capability and set
up distribution structures in the way of social welfare states, developing countries do not have such advantages. What developing countries have is limited
experience in innovation and development. In addition, they sometimes have to
face dramatic changes in their societies. These changes are shuffling the solidarity tradition of agricultural societies and jeopardizing the cohesion of thewhole community. Under these conditions it is understandable that great investments in social resources are more important for these countries than for thedeveloped countries in the West. Therefore, the simple development models
must be replaced by ones which discover and open new ways valuable for the
future. Sustainable development is not to exploit and consume all the naturaland social resources; conversely, it is to create conditions to integrate into the124Sustainable Education Development under Globalization,……

globalization process in both economic and cultural fields (World Commission
on the Social Dimension of Globalization, 2004).
From the above analysis, within the requirements for education policies, these three trends must be taken into consideration:(i) In the globalization wave, we can see a similarity at the global level interms of education purposes, contents, and standards, regardless of thecharacteristics of each nation. Education as a future investment for the
young generation must contribute to create and develop action capability,
awareness ability, and the ability to understand profoundly complicatedrelationships in social life and professional life; it must encourage creativeness in thinking and acting. The characteristics of each nation must
be defined in the content of education; this content reflects the special
characteristics of each nation, including language, local and regional cultural traditions, and the living conditions influenced by natural geographic factors. However, there is a growing trend of the “global curriculum,”in which a popular international language (like English) will be taught
early; the curricula of mathematics, natural sciences, and IT are equivalent. There are two issues that are important to the education standards:
one is similarity in educational level structure from kindergarten to tertiary education, and the other is time and qualification requirements. An
experimental system to measure education and training results has beendeveloped for the past 15 years (OECD, 2004). The standards, process
and methods were applied to measure the education and training resultsthat have great impacts on national education systems. Moreover, someinternational comparative studies have put the national education systems into a global competition to which no nation can be indifferent.
(ii) Traditional models to develop education systems have established a certain order. It starts from eradicating illiteracy and moves to building
higher degrees for a more complete education system. Decades areneeded to build a complete education system, but under the pressure of
globalization, such a process is not feasible. In order to join and succeed
in global competition, and to reform the nation rapidly, each nation must
give priority to elementary education because it is the foundation forother higher education levels. With great efforts in a short time, devel-

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oping countries must achieve a common global education level to makesocial advances as rapidly as possible.
(iii) The core factor of the knowledge society, which is replacing the industrial society, is sciences. If developing countries want to modernize theireconomy, they must develop their own scientific system because this system is the key to international competition. Because global cooperation
activities will follow scientific rules and will be based on thoughts,
through exchanges among scientific workers, developing countries thatwant to advance to higher levels cannot escape the general trend of making things scientific on a global scale. In the knowledge economy, as scientific know-how is the most expensive in the global market, developing
countries must quickly establish scientific production for themselves.

2. Scientific Development as an Important Task in Tertiary
Education
When we consider the importance of tertiary education development
to establish a particular effective science system for a country, we are talking
about the core factor of sustainable development under globalization pressure(Knight, 2004). Apart from this pressure, and because of the high price ofimported knowledge, each country must develop its own knowledge and creativeness with its own internal resources within its own scientific system. Long
before economic globalization, the sciences were internationalized. In the relationship between globalization and sustainability, this affirmation is very meaningful, as demonstrated in the four following points:• While the economic, cultural, and political impacts of globalization may
partly fall in violent conflict with national and regional traditions and create new social conflicts and dependences, global linkages in the scientificfield do not lead to similar problems and risks.
• Scientific advances will occur only in very small part under the conditionsof national and regional competition. It is obvious that building a science
infrastructure is very costly, but this investment will promise a linkage
with the intellectual treasure of the world, and will enable the most effective participation in scientific debates beyond national and cultural bor-126

Sustainable Education Development under Globalization,……

ders. Finally, the working experiences, wherever they are gained, will be
evaluated scientifically, and then popularized in the society.
• When we talk about sciences, we mention knowledge and awareness as“basic components.” These components have very specific characters:
they are always symbolic and flexible, depending on location, time, situation, and reality. In addition, they are immaterial, and thus relatively stable. Physically, knowledge can be destroyed only when all knowledge
documents are destroyed and all people who hold knowledge in themselves are killed. Knowledge and awareness are common property. They
cannot disappear. They remain intact when they are shared, so knowledge
should be disseminated. In short, sciences are related to the entities which
are very different from goods and service products.
• The above characteristics make the sciences with their achievements avery important factor for the future of human society. Even errors canhave scientific effectiveness. Any scientific viewpoint on teaching andlearning can be analyzed in serious scientific debates and can then be verified through the teaching and learning practice. Such competition will verify the solidity of these teaching and learning viewpoints.
A fact that should not be neglected is that patents, copyrights of intellectual property, and scientific human resources are all very expensive. However, knowledge and creativeness do not have specific and separate cultural or
national characteristics. Therefore, science development is the best way for anation to make the most of its own unlimited human resources. Through thisutilization, the nation can integrate into the global knowledge society.

3. Education Reform in Vietnam: Achievements and Challenges
3.1. Education system in Vietnam: An overview
Where does Vietnam stand? It is not easy to answer this question
because the statistical reports about the Vietnamese education system are notsufficient. In addition, the survey methods and reliability of the statistical data
are not persuasive. In the following we use statistical data from the World Bank
(World Bank 2006).

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In 2005, there were about 48,000 kindergartens and nursery schools
accommodating about 2.75 million children, among them 421,000 children aged
from 3 months to 3 years old (accounting for 15 percent of the total children at
the same age) go to nursery schools and 2.3 million to kindergartens (accountingfor 58 percent of the total children at the same age). By 2010, the kindergarten
and nursery school system should be expanded to receive 18 percent of the total
children under 3 years old and 67 percent of the 3–5-year-old children.
Also in 2005, there were 7.77 million children from 6 to 11 years old(accounting for 98 percent of the total children at the same age) attending fiveyear elementary schools. In the education system, there are 14,000 elementary
schools and 1,000 elementary and secondary-combined schools. In comparison
with the data at the beginning of this decade, the numbers of both pupils andschools are lower. Two reasons can be mentioned. Firstly, in Vietnam the birthrate has decreased. Secondly, there are fewer and fewer pupils at higher ages
attending elementary school. A few years ago, under the pressure of illiteracy
eradication programs, the rate of pupils at higher ages attending elementary
schools was very high. One of the development goals for 2010 is that 99 percent of the pupils at elementary school age are going to school. A second goal isthat full-day schooling is established. The third goal is that pupils from the ageof three are beginning to learn foreign languages, and the number of the pupils,
who have to repeat their classes, will be reduced significantly.
Like in other countries, secondary education in Vietnam is divided
into lower secondary school (from 6th to 9th form) and the upper secondary
school (from 10th to 12th form). When pupils graduate elementary school, theycan enter secondary school. When pupils graduate secondary school, they haveto pass an examination to enter high school. In the 2004–2005 school-year,
there were 6.7 million pupils attending 10,000 secondary schools and 2.8 million pupils attending 2,224 high schools. While the curricula for both elementary and secondary schools are standardized nationwide, the curriculum for highschools is divided into a general curriculum and a special curriculum for those
who specialize in some certain subjects (science, social science, or arts) fromthe 2006–2007 school year on. The latter can be introduced by single schools,
approved by the District Ministry of Education and Training. By 2010, secondary schools must be able to take all students at secondary school age. Half of128

Sustainable Education Development under Globalization,……

Macroeconomic management
Transparency, accountability &Fiscal policy
corruption
Debt policy

Quality of public administration

Efficiency of revenue mobiliz

Trade

Public finance

Financial sector

Property rights & governanceBusiness regulatory environ-t

Gender equality

Pol,& institut. for environ. sustain
Social protection & labor

Equity of public resource use
Human resources

Vietnam

East Asia

lower secondary graduates will continue to the high school level. To meet thesegoals, the number of form repeaters must be lowered, and the number of school
drop-outs must be reduced.
Vocational training has three levels: primary (duration under oneyear), intermediate, and college (each level lasts from one to three years). In
2005, there were 1,688 vocational training schools. There are many managing
agencies of these vocational training schools. Most of the vocational training
schools are under the management of the Ministry of Education and Training(MOET). Some others are under the management of the military. There are alsoprivate and foreign-supported vocational training institutions. In general, vocational training schools and centers in Vietnam are still weak and cannot meetthe demand. By 2010, each province or city must have at least one vocational
training school and the training contents must be improved to a higher level tomeet the increasing demand of the economy. Thirty percent of the secondary
graduate students and 10 percent of the high school graduates should enter
vocational training schools and centers.
This information reveals from nursery level to high school level that129

Nguyen Thi Phuong Hoa

Vietnamese education has achieved a higher level than would be expectedbased on its economic status (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2003). The education is impressive in terms ofboth the achievements and the growth rate. Along with such good achievements, some severe weaknesses are being addressed through strong reform
efforts in all education sectors (Tran, 2002). Compared with the neighboring
countries in the region, Vietnam has achieved significant progress, and thisstatement is supported by Figure 1.
Priority for education in Vietnam also illustrates the appropriate
insights about substantial investments in education, which have helped many
developing countries to succeed. The Republic of Korea is an example. Thirty
years ago, it was at the low development level as Afghanistan. Now, it is one of
the most competitive Asian economies, and it scores at the top of the leading
nations in international education (OECD, 2007). Annual financial investment
into education in South Korea is as high as the investment of the United Statesof America (US). The Republic of Korea also stands at the third position among
OECD countries and OECD countries’ partners, after Israel and Ireland (OECD,2007). There is a similar trend in Taiwan (China) and The People’s Republic ofChina. This level of investment affirms the importance of education in globalization, including tertiary education, which plays an increasingly important role.
Therefore, to develop and integrate into the globalization process, Vietnam must
invest in tertiary education both financially and intellectually.
Vietnam’s tertiary education system has been restructured andimproved comprehensively from its low starting level at the end of the last century. The initial reform in education started in the North after Vietnam gained
independence and then in the whole country, after the Vietnam War against the
US ended. At that time, Vietnam’s tertiary education structure was copied fromthe education model of the Soviet Union. There were a series of small scientificinstitutions, which were highly specialized, mono-disciplinary, and with low
linkages between teaching and doing research. To suit the centrally planned
economy, universities were put under the management of relevant ministries(Kelly, 2000). The education bill from 1998 opened this structure, delivered
increased autonomy to the universities, and articulated a modern understandingof the close connection of research and academic teaching. Since the middle of130

Sustainable Education Development under Globalization,……

the 1990s, five new universities were established by mergers of smaller universities. These new universities were Hanoi National University, Ho Chi Minh
City National University, Da Nang University, Hue University, and Thai
Nguyen University. These universities all follow the worldwide models ofmulti-disciplinary campus-universities. Applying the government resolution
Number 14/2005 on basic and comprehensive reform in tertiary education,
MOET has recently taken further action. It set up a reform plan to carry out
reforms based on successful international experiences. One of the tasks is toremove the central ministerial steering mechanism for universities by self-management and self-responsibility. This is a basic reform effort to address theinborn stagnation of centrally run universities in Vietnam.
There are two levels in the tertiary education system in Vietnam—
undergraduate and graduate levels—with a variety of studying time options andentrance conditions (Institute of International Education, 2004). Undergraduate
education is divided into two levels: (i) college level (requires 2–3 years or
1.5–2 years, depending on the entrance levels of the students) and (ii) university
level, which has two phases and lasts for 4–6 years, depending on each profession. The first phase lasts for 1 or 2 years, in which students study general subjects. The second phase focuses on professional study. Graduate education
includes (i) master’s degree, which lasts for 1.5–2 years, and mainly focuses on
professional training and (ii) doctorial degree, which lasts for 2–4 years for students with master’s degrees, and 4 years for students with bachelor’s degrees.
Figure 2 shows the basic structure of Vietnam’s education system,
although it may vary depending on the individual university. The diagram also
indicates that while the level classification is in accordance with the current
global trends, the trust of higher levels in the education quality of lower levels
is quite poor because there are plenty of entrance examinations. The existenceof so many entrance examinations in Vietnam reveals weaknesses of quality allover the education system. These examinations are an attempt to compensate
for a lack of accredited standards by an inefficient comprehensive control system. Although examinations create high pressure for students and lecturers,
their results do not indicate the real study performance of students. Therefore,
the reform of the examination scheme throughout the education system isanother important task in modernizing education in general and tertiary educa-

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Nguyen Thi Phuong Hoa

Doctor
Dissertation
MasterMA thesis

Doctoral candidatc(4 years)

Master eandidate(2 years)

Doctor’s entrance exam

Master’s entrance exam

Bachelor(BA, BS)
Final exam
Second stage(2years)Professional education
The stage transferring exam
Certificate of general university
First stage(2 years)General education
Entrance exam
High school diplomation in particular.
In Vietnam there are seven types of universities. They differ by theirgraduations and their administrative competence. These types are:• Multi-professional universities, following the western tertiary education
models,• Teacher-training universities and colleges,• Technical and industrial universities with different numbers of disciplines,• Universities related to economic branches, public institutions, and professions like universities for agriculture, forestry and fishery; military andpublic service; architecture; journalism; and communication,• Medical and pharmaceutical universities,• Culture and art universities and universities for sports, and• Open universities, open institutes, and private universities.
Though the administrative homogeneity of tertiary education in Vietnam is making progress the institutional landscape is still very fragmented.
Some universities are under the management of the local departments of education and training or provincial people’s committees. However the general com-132

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petence standards of MOET are arduously imposed. This causes laborious coordination and approval procedures and reinforces bureaucracy, which is widespread in Vietnam. Moreover, the country’s tertiary education system is facing
an uncoordinated growth of different study programs and specializations without consistency in curricula between universities.
In the study year 2004–2005, there were 1.3 million students enrolled
in 230 universities and colleges and 35,000 master and doctoral students participating in 122 different programs. Because the demand for education is muchhigher than the supply, private and open universities and colleges, where students often have to pay high study fees, are successfully offering many programs to meet the demand.
High targets have been set up in the tertiary education development
plan. However, implementation plans have not been put down in detail. According to the governmental action plan, the following performance must be achievedin tertiary education reform by 2010 (Social Republic of Viet Nam, 2002).
• Time, entrance condition required, and graduation of all levels of tertiary
education system must be consistent nationwide• Vietnam’s tertiary education system must come closer to the international
standards. “Major trends and achievements and development experiencesin higher education in the world at the end of the 20th century and the
beginning of the 21st century represent the second grounds for Vietnam’s
education policies. It is always considered an important task to review successful educational development policies in other countries so that they
can be applied creatively to the concrete situations in Vietnam. Thanks tothis approach, perceptions and ways of thinking have been gained…In theworld of globalization and economic integration, the Government supports
the expansion of international relations to exchange views, ideas, experiences, advanced progresses in researches, studies, technologies and toenhance mutual understanding among peoples for peace, friendship andco-operation. International co-operation provides opportunities to mobilize
external resources for the development of higher education” (Ministry of
Education and Training, Higher Education Department, 2006).
• Quality improvements must be implemented basically and comprehensively in all aspects: equipment for all universities, curricula, teaching meth-133

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ods, evaluation, and cooperation with foreign university partners. The
most competitive universities should be cultivated to become academic
centers of excellence.
• Research activities in universities must be developed and fostered. Qualityof teaching and learning should be improved. Research results should beapplied in reality and knowledge and technology transfer must be
increased. Tertiary education should effectively combine training,
research, and knowledge transfer to increase the adaptability of graduateswith the labor market requirements, and to decrease the high unemployment rate of graduates.
• Management for tertiary education must be improved: standards andaccreditation should be implemented, resources should be used more
effectively and education statistics must be more comprehensive, reliable
and topical.
• By 2010, the number of students should increase from 140 in 2005 (World
Bank, 2006: 19) to 200 per 10,000 citizens, the number of master students
must increase to 38,000, and the number of doctoral students must
increase to 15,000. The proportion of lecturers in universities holding master’s degrees will be increased to 40 percent (in 2000, it was only 27 percent), and doctoral degrees must be held by 25 percent (in 2000, it was 18
percent).
Vietnam needs to travel a long way to catch up with the developed
regional and global education level in overcoming its own weaknesses in education. Some of the main weaknesses are presented in the next section.
3.2. Weaknesses and challenges of the education system in Vietnam
3.2.1.Research and studying conditions (Nguyen 2007, forthcoming)• The current curricula for students now are overloaded in terms of contents.
This is also a weakness in some other countries because lecturer and management agencies (ministries, departments, universities) always want toprovide students as much knowledge as possible. But in fact, students’time and ability to learn all the taught knowledge and skills are limited.
Another curriculum weakness is that almost all subjects focus on theory
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in generalizing their knowledge and in transferring it to practical problems. Vietnam’s lecturers often fail to convey to their students broad
knowledge and a consolidated understanding about a profession or a field.
Vietnamese students study much but focus only on their narrow profession. Moreover, the information provided in the lecture is sometimes outof date. All these weaknesses can be seen in the curriculum contents of
any university.
• Another weakness is the traditional routine learning methodology. Students keep following the pre-set “recipes,” like in cooking. They follow
exactly what they are told by their lecturers. Lecturers are practicing
teacher-centered methods and students learn by heart the lecture contents
without sufficient understanding. In exams students are evaluated throughtheir memory performance. Students are weak at research. They do notknow how to select a research topic, to set up a research plan, to choose a
research methodology and to evaluate the formulation of a research question, even during the initial steps.
• Vietnamese students are industrious in studying, not least because of thepressure of the examinations. From the first day of school, they get used tostressful learning programs. They have to attend classes outside school to
get more knowledge and skills to pass the examinations. Students in Vietnam nowadays seem to have only one way to enter a promising personal
future: passing the university entrance exam. Therefore, the pressure of theuniversity entrance exam is very high. Students bring their study habitsfrom high school to university. They do not have time to develop a newlearning behavior or find innovative ways to approach a topic. They also
do not have time or experience to learn from their faults. It can be said thatstudents study because they have to cope with the exams and passing theseexams is their main purpose. As a result students often know a stunning
number of facts without any appropriate understanding of the overarching
meaning and importance. At all levels from school to university, the necessary creative virtues for students are not paid enough attention. Far too
little progress is thus made in core competencies like self-confidence,
independence, ability to be critical, and social and communicative skills.

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3.2.2.University lecturers
The qualifications of many university lecturers are rather low and heterogeneous. Normally the better lecturers with good professionalism are gathered in the big universities in the cities. There are many older lecturers withlimited command of their subject. Most of them graduated from universities in
Eastern Europe decades ago and have had no chance to upgrade their knowledge so far (Tipton et al., 2003). The targets of education development of Vietnam to 2010 described above are indicating that, even when Vietnam achieves
these targets, the level of Vietnam’s tertiary education will be still far from aninternationally competitive system.
Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem said in a conference about
tertiary reform in June 2004 that the education infrastructure of universities inVietnam was thirty years behind that of other developed countries (Vietnam
News, 2004). The main reasons for the poor performance of many universities
are: low payment, shortage of research resources, and lack of scientific cooperation with other universities (especially foreign ones). Another reason is the
weakness in foreign language ability of many Vietnamese lecturers. Despite thecommon problem of language difficulty, many Vietnamese students have graduated from both foreign and domestic universities with excellent scientificachievements. However, only few of them are willing to work in Vietnameseuniversities because doing so would not give them much chance to develop
their future and career. Therefore, improving the professionalism and scientificperformance of university lecturers is as important as it is difficult to achieve(Tran, 2006).
Another problem related to the limited professionalism of university
lecturers is a particular trouble affecting many university courses. Students
sometimes bribe lecturers directly or indirectly to get higher marks or to pass
the exams. Addressing this problem is part of the resolute governmental fighton corruption (Asian Development Bank and OECD, 2006). However, the realsituation is mostly concealed and outside the view of the broad public (Tran,
1999). Recently, some cases in violating exam regulations have been reported
on some newspapers and people were very disappointed (Hoang, 2006).

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3.2.3.Quality problems
Quality of tertiary education is always a hot topic in open debates
about education reform (see, for instance, Ha, 2006). Apart from the above
mentioned points, an underdeveloped quality understanding in education isanother reason for the quality deficits. A nationwide system of indicators forobligatory standards was developed only in late 2004 to accredit universities,
departments, and study courses (Ngo, 2006). New and modern insights of a reasonable understanding of quality are elbowing arduously against traditional
input-concentrated approaches. According to this new view for educational
processes, quality is the difference between intention and delivered resourceson the one hand and the evaluated results on the other hand. To follow thisunderstanding, it is necessary to identify the input-output-quality. Since there is
not a consistent standard system with international comparability applied for thewhole country, the scoring for students’ achievements have limited value. Students holding excellent degrees may not really be excellent. This discrepancy isoften worsened by the already mentioned problem of illegal acquisition of
faked or purchased degrees.
The high unemployment of graduates in Vietnam is caused considerably by universities’ quality deficits and their lacking willingness to meet theneeds of the economy. According to the statistical data of the Ministry ofLabour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) dated on 5th May, 2006, 80 percent of the graduates are working in professions different from the subject theystudied at university (Ho Chi Minh City [HCMC] National University, 2006).
Because enterprises do not believe in the training and certificate quality comingfrom the universities, they only recruit students after an additional qualificationin specialized training institutions providing them urgently needed core competencies like independence, responsibility, creativeness, and foreign language
abilities.
3.2.4.Weaknesses in research
There is a traditional and considerable gap between teaching andresearch in universities in Vietnam. Most of universities consider teaching as
their first priority. Only when the tertiary education reform was implemented
recently, the strong connection between teaching and research was imposed.

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Enhancing of research activities inside universities is demanded as is networking with independent research institutes outside. Hanoi National University and
HCMC National University are being developed into centers of excellence.
Vietnam has a long road to go before reaching a research level at which universities play a key role in the country’s further development and where modern
teaching stems back to the lecturers’ own research practice. Most universities inVietnam lack research infrastructure like labs and information equipment, andmany libraries are in poor condition. Many subjects are based only on outdated
curricula. Many lecturers do not have their own research experiences. Only
small research projects are generally carried out in universities. In “An Open
Letter to the new Minister of MOET”, Professor Ha Van Thinh wrote that “inthe past five years, lecturers of HCMC National University had written only 1.7
articles on average, and only one research paper submitted to a global copyrightorganization had received a copyright.” * This is a common problem of all universities in Vietnam, not only the problem of HCMC National University. The
national science communities are gathered in the research institutes of the Vietnam Academy of Sciences and Technologies (VAST) and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and Humanities (VASSH). Meanwhile, many university
lecturers do not participate in any scientific discourse (Anon, 2006). Corresponding to this, international networking is also poor, caused not least by
insufficient language capabilities. The latter is the main reason for failure to
exploit the opportunities given by accessing the huge and relatively cheap Internet sources and communication platforms.

4. Sustainable Reforms through Action Research
The weaknesses and restrictions discussed above been deeply rooted
for a long time in Vietnam’s education system; they are revealed very clearly inall education levels. In the Vietnamese training establishment, there is not yet a
new learning culture, called also a future-oriented learning culture, corresponding to the present level of development of science and technology as well as to* Laodong Newspaper, No.181, July 03, 2006

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the demands of the times. Firstly it must be affirmed that the traditional Vietnamese learning culture has two salient characteristics: it is scholastic andreproductive, and it serves the purpose of examinations almost exclusively. Thislearning culture hinders reform efforts being carried out actively in Vietnamese
education, particularly in tertiary education. Of course, it is not too difficult tofind out where the most pressing problem is and which models are suitable toapply. The most difficult thing is creating a proper learning culture. If the learning culture does not change—especially in tertiary education—the reform effort
cannot be as effective as expected. Moreover, the achievement of the education
system has not been able to meet the development requirements of the society
in the context of globalization. As mentioned above, there is no shortage ofsuitable and future-oriented initiatives on reform. These initiatives are all able
to meet the requirements of sustainable changes. Nevertheless, when implementing these tasks, we have to take into account the barriers of usual habits
and behavior in Vietnamese traditional society.
Under the conditions of national development and globalization pressures, all fundamental reforms must rapidly show their impact and effectiveness. Therefore, it will not be enough if after setting up reasonable and necessary reform targets we only wait for their slow and progressive realization
through growing generations. Beyond that, we should be more active in implementing the reform targets: reforms must be implemented first where there areunsuitable routines and traditional sluggishness and where there are opportunities for new reform experiences and sustainable effectiveness.
Because such action plans require concrete actions by people, it will
be unreasonable if at the beginning we design a plan and try to apply to thewhole country. The most important task is to encourage as many as possible ofthose working in training establishments to have meaningful changes in theirattitudes and behaviors suitable to the particularities of every specific domain.
For instance, if we want to effectively carry out sustainable reform ina central area of tertiary education, which is studying sciences scientifically inuniversities, we should have programs and plans which can meet the following
conditions:• Must be implemented in a certain location (university, department, andsubject) and should be able to point out a clear action plan for all

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identifying ageneral or initialidea
reconnaissanceor fact finding
take first action
stepplanning

evaluate
amended plantake second
action step …

participants.
• Could be implemented with current available conditions and humanresources.
• Must be oriented directly to the most pressing problems about which nearly all members are concerned.
• Must be able to create a new studying habit which can be applied in all circumstances• Must have a clear potential for sustainable development. First priority is
not how to achieve the targets but how to get sustainable changes in attitudes, habits and actions.
• Must take into account complicated social issues, benefit conflicts among
members, and how to link all the members and encourage them to contribute to their organization. Should also identify clearly the responsibilities and encourage studying activities for long term purposes.
Action research is a theory with an increasing impact on sustainable
reform. This theory can satisfy all of the above criteria. It was first developed in
the 1940s by Lewin, a German and American socio-psychologist. This theory
focused on finding sustainable solutions to the problems of social research andreform. Lewin’s viewpoint was that direct participants in the reforms must participate in an action program, in which action steps are planned carefully andcomprehensively. Figure 3 shows all the steps in that process.

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Each action has six factors, which are created successively and are
related to one another. Observing the order of these steps will ensure achievement of the target. This theory is associated with learning through experience,elaborated by Dewey (1938) and later recognized by the education science withthe planned social action model. Based on this theory, many research alternatives can be implemented to directly change the social activities. Moreover, it
can be applied in all social fields (Zuber-Skerritt, 1996). While the theory ofaction research is not applied equally in all western countries as it has been
largely preferred in the UK and Australia (Action Research Resources, 2007), it
seems to be very effective in implementing reform projects in developing countries (Huizer, 1997).
This theory’s special point, which helps distinguish it from traditional experimental social research, is that its research objects are not external passive objects; they are acting subjects who study their own activities themselves.
In other words, the research subject systematically studies his or her own activities; the research objectives are the activities of the subjects who carry out thisresearch, aiming at sustainably changing themselves and the action system inwhich they participate based on their expected targets. The basic schema
describes the cycle of realizing research based on action research theory following the spiral in which each grade comprises six steps with the following contents (O’Brien, 1998).
• Step 1: A given situation should be changed, so it is studied by researchersor participants (or insiders) and then the core issue is identified andexpressed clearly and exactly.
• Step 2: Collect information to be able to describe carefully the core of theresearch issue.
• Step 3: Discuss solutions and build a tool kit to evaluate; systematicallystudy steps to solve the problem.
• Step 4: Test the most promising solutions.
• Step 5: Evaluate the achieved results together.
• Step 6: Analyze the achievements, find new problems to be solved in thenext steps.
The next step will be a higher level in the spiral and another process
will begin similarly. Action research occurs continuously in this pattern.

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The techniques here are rather simple. The researchers do not study
the actions and behaviors of the research objects (other people), and then basedon research results explain and show the research objects what they should andshould not do. Instead, the researchers—or the insiders—do the research about
their own behaviors, actions, and problems and then find solutions to those
problems. By learning how to solve their own problems, the researchers will beable to improve their own behaviors and actions with their own exclusive strategies. They do not need outside influence. Like in any other systematic and positive studying activities, results can be achieved only with certain conditions.
The direct participants must have a certain autonomy and be equipped withbasic professional qualifications, for example, methods for organizing gradualproject implementation and systematic measures in supervising the process ofproject implementation. Indirect participants must actively support this process.
If the above-mentioned conditions are met, all the criteria of sustainable reform will be satisfied. Of course, this theory can only be applied to specific aspects or fields, where concrete experience can be learnt. This is also a
issue of the theory of action research: at first it has only local influence. Like allother bottom-up strategies, it also faces the question of how to make the strategy’s impact reach beyond the limit of direct participants. In contrast, all experience drawn from top-down reform indicates that such reforms may lead tostructural changes or changes in actions and behaviors. However, such topdown reforms also reveal that stimulations from outside often meet obstacles
and become ineffective where there exist sluggish conservative routines andingrained behaviors. In such cases, there is no chance for “learning by doing” asindicated by the theory of action research.
The two reform orientations (top-down and bottom-up) are neither
opposite nor exclusive to each other; they should supplement each other effectively in order that the reform can deploy its effect more widely. In addition, thebottom-up reform strategy, as mentioned in the theory of action research, needs
to have appropriate conditions in terms of organization structure (the independence of each member, conditions and ability to approach information, current
conditions to experiment with the reform and avoid unnecessary risks) to beable to develop itself.
The two basic factors of action research, to study a) systematically142

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through b) practicing research on subjects’ own actions, are finding their ideal
realization environment where just these purposes are institutionalized: in education institutions in general (Hermes, 2001) and in universities in particular.
Finally, the real problems here are to teach and to learn with strict scientificmethods and for both the lecturers and students to keep studying and researching continuously (Nguyen and Muszynski, 2004).
This is the most successful studying strategy developed so far. In thescope of this study, we will expect an improvement in studying method, not agood studying result. Strict scientific rules, systematic analysis, and correct
answers covering effective and long-term studying models are all the strengthsof the model discussed in this paper.

5. Framework Concept for Reforming Teaching and Learning Methods in Teacher Training
The set of principles of action research reveals a simple to understandstrategy for sustainably reforming teacher training institutions in their coretasks: self-researching the subject’s own actions in improving teaching andlearning methods as a scientific learning process.
The research problem is not imposed from outside but is an issue
coming from inside the participating actors. The action subjects are studying
themselves and the research object is the subjects’ own doing. The order of necessary steps in an action research project can be shown briefly as follows:• Step 1: Define which current teaching/learning methods in a concrete
study subject/course/study task are problematic from the viewpoints of thepersons directly affected (students and lecturers) and what should bechanged in which direction.
• Step 2: Find out what the main obstacles are to overcome the definedproblems.
• Step 3: Decide what the new teaching/learning methods should look like,how they could be carried out, and how to analyze with scientific methods
the experiences which are made and what could be a concrete and feasible
reform project.
• Step 4: Carry out the reform project, which is simultaneously accompanied

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by self-research based on scientific standards.
• Step 5: Evaluate the achieved results of the project in terms of: (i) the experiences and insights achieved and (ii) whether the empirical research results
reflect the process of the project adequately. Is there any major difference
between the experience of the participants and the scientific evaluation?
• Step 6: Determine what has been achieved by the results regarding the initial project goals. How can we improve the accompanying research inusing additional or modified problem formulation or empirical instruments? What should be the connecting project?
As discussed briefly regarding action research projects, some conditions are required to implement such projects. Firstly, apart from the direct participation of students and lecturers, we need the supportive participation of
authorities and service providers inside the university. This participation isespecially important for sustainability. Another important prerequisite is a qualification of all directly affected persons. They have to learn beforehand how torecognize and apply:(i) The basic methods to practice team activities in partial independence (theconcrete targets are not pre-set, the implementation method is not regulated, and there is no continuous outside supervision),(ii) Methods and techniques for empirical research on a basic level, and(iii) Careful documentation of the project courses and easy-to-understandreporting for everyone outside the project.
The mentioned methods, instruments and techniques are easy to learn
in a short time on the necessary basic level and can be made available for students and lecturers of all subject areas. By doing so, the benefits of the projectwill be much greater in comparison to the efforts undertaken. Thanks to their
excellent learning capacity, scientific self-learning projects have the potential toenable any institution—especially teacher training institutions—to become alearning institution at all levels.
This paper is not the place to deal with the framework conditions fornecessary content elements, pragmatism, and project design. These conditions
should be considered and paid careful attention in the action research project(see for details in Nguyen and Muszynski, 2004). In order to have sustainable
reform in tertiary education in Vietnam in general and in teacher training in par-144

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ticular, the following closing remarks should be focused upon.
• Self-researching reform projects suits well to developing countries like
Vietnam because the process can be applied under limited conditions ofequipment and qualified human resources, like the situation of teacher
training institutions in Vietnam.
• Adaptability with current available and restricted conditions and little supplementary requirements is possible because these projects do not needgreat scientific efforts and achievements. The scientific results do not provide the learning success. Rather, the experiences from carrying out the
project are important. Even errors and mistakes can be fruitful learning
elements.
• Reform processes are always reflected in detail through the accompanying
scientific research; the whole project always remains under the commandof the participants. It is their own problem, addressed and controlled bythemselves, which is a much better approach than being confronted with
instructions from outside. It has been empirically established that externally motivated reform requests suffer from short expiry dates.
• Action research projects also bring multiple valuable sub-results. If theseprojects are implemented effectively, the reform work will bring students,
lecturers, management, and service suppliers together so that effective andinnovative communication structures will spread and a common understanding about the university’s goals can be found.
Even if these projects have not been successful in all aspects at the
beginning, the mid- and long-term learning achievements are still meaningful.
Finally, it should be underlined again that the purpose of the projects describedabove is not to create a “definitely reformed” teacher training institution but an
institution with better learning capacity—an institution that is able to conduct
self-reforms continuously.

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http://www.vneconomy.com.vn/eng/?param=article&catid=10&id=dc20ac7919301f.
World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization. 2004. A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All. Geneva: World Commission on the Social
Dimension of Globalization.
World Bank in Vietnam. 2006. Education in Vietnam. Accessed on 2 August 2006 at
http://siteresources.WorldBank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/2782001121703274255/1439264-1153425508901/Education_Vietnam_Development.pdf.
_______. 2006. “Overview on Education in Viet Nam: Development History, Achievements, Challenges, and Solutions.” Presentation to Senior Education Policy Makers
from Six African Countries in Hanoi on 26 June, 2006. Accessed on 2 August, 2006 at
http://siteresources.WorldBank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/
278200-1121703274255/1439264-1153425508901/
Overview_Edu_Vietnam_Development.ppt.
Zuber-Skerritt, O. 1996. New Directions in Action Research. London: Falmer Press.

149

Chapter 6
Micro-determinants of Household Welfare,
Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

Tran Duy Dong

Abstract
This paper adopts the methodology of Wodon (1999) and applies it to the data from theVietnam (Household) Living Standard Surveys in order to identify the micro-determinantsof household welfare, social welfare, and inequality in Vietnam during the period
1993–2002. We find that, on average, Vietnamese people enjoyed an absolutely improved
standard of living during the study period. At the same time, social welfare was also
improved remarkably from 1993 to 2002 in absolute terms. However, the increase inincome was accompanied by a rapid rise of inequality during 1993–1998, and a slightdecrease in inequality during 1998–2002. The study reconfirms the determinants of theVietnamese household welfare that were found in previous studies, in which occupation,
educational level of the household head, and the geographical location where the households reside are still important factors.

1. Introduction
The Vietnamese government has notched up substantial achievementsin economic growth as well as in the reduction of poverty. Those results havebeen achieved by the reform of a number of policies since the early of 1990s.
Booming trade was marked by the deregulation in the trade regime in the early
1990s. The country actively joined free trade area and economic cooperation
organizations such as the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) in 1995 and theAsia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 1998; Vietnam signed bilateral
trade agreements with important partners like the European Union in 1992 andthe United States in 2000. In addition, foreign direct investment also was legalized in 1987. The private sector was recognized as an important sector by the151Tran Duy Dong

enactment of the Law on Enterprise in 2000. The privatization process of stateowned enterprises, though it has not proceeded as expected, has still contributed
positively to the corporate sector. In the agricultural sector, land rights were
granted to individuals and farmers were allowed to trade their products in themarket without any restriction. In addition, the government adopted policies forbudgetary reform and financial sector reform in an attempt to produce macroeconomic stability, which facilitates economic growth. With such reforms,
Vietnam has achieved a remarkable average economic growth rate of 7.5 percent since 1990 (General Statistics Office [GSO], 2004). This growth has
absolutely increased household welfare and reduced the poverty rate (Glewwe
et al., 2000).
The impact of economic growth and trade liberalization on poverty
and inequality as well as household welfare in Vietnam has been a topic ofinterest for many researchers. Notable studies include Glewwe et al. (2000),
Justino and Julie (2003), Niimi et al. (2003), and Seshan (2005). A common
point in the studies that have been completed is that they only cover the period
1993–1998 because they are based on two Vietnam Living Standard Surveys(VLSS): VLSS9293 and VLSS9798. In these surveys the evidence of the positive impact of economic growth on household welfare and equality was relatively clear to observe because in the early 1990s the country had just started its
transition from a highly centrally planned economy, in which most Vietnamese
people were living in poverty, to a socialist-oriented market economy. Startingin 1998, however, the impact of economic growth on household welfare andequality appears to be mixed and is more difficult to identify because from thistime the government strongly deregulated a number of restrictive trade policies
to implement its commitments for entry to the AFTA and to prepare to enter theWorld Trade Organization (WTO). Since 1998, in parallel with a more open
trade regime, Vietnam has also had to deal with a number of trade claims fromother countries, such as for an anti-dumping price of fish by the United Statesand for shrimp by the European Union. These claims are likely to have negative
impacts on households.
No comprehensive academic analysis of this period is yet available.
Furthermore, no study has yet been attempted to investigate the changes insocial welfare induced by economic growth during the period 1993–2002. This152

Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

is an important area for policy makers; analysis of the impact of economic policies at different points in time on households would provide a basis for policy
adjustment.
Such an analysis is conducted in this paper using the most up-to-datehousehold data from VLSS9293, VLSS9798, and the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey 2002 (VHLSS2002). The next section of this paper
describes these surveys in detail. The third section of the paper investigates the
micro-determinants of Vietnamese household welfare in 1993–2002 and highlights the differences in welfare received among different households and socioeconomic groups. The fourth section uses the dominance theories of Lorenz andGeneralized Lorenz, as well as the social evaluation functions to examine thedynamics of social welfare and trace out the sources of changes in equality.
Some concluding remarks are provided in the last section.

2. The Vietnam (Household) Living Standard Surveys(VLSS and VHLSS)
Three surveys were carried out by the General Statistics Office (GSO)
of Vietnam in the past fifteen years. The first survey was carried out in 1992–93(namely, VLSS9293) by the cooperation of the State Planning Committee and
the GSO, with financial contributions from the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA)
and technical assistance from the World Bank. This survey covered 4,800
households nationwide and included a household survey, a community survey,
and a market price survey. In the household survey, topics covered included
household size and composition, health, anthropometric measures of nutrition,
education, housing characteristics, migration, employment, non-farm enterprises, agriculture, other income, expenditure and food consumption, ownership ofconsumer durables, and savings and credit.
The second survey was conducted between December 1997 andDecember 1998 (namely, VLSS9798) by the GSO, with financial support
from the UNDP and SIDA and technical assistance from the World Bank.
Like VLSS9293, this survey included a household survey, a community survey, and a market price survey. Different from VLSS9293, in VLSS9798 a

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survey of health centers was added. The household questionnaire covered thesame topics as the VLSS9293 and was administrated to 6,000 households.
Interestingly, about 4,302 households which were interviewed in VLSS9293
again participated in VLSS9798, creating a panel data which is a good source
for analysis.
The Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey was carried out in2002 (VHLSS2002) by the GSO with financial support from the JapaneseBank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and technical assistance from theWorld Bank. The VHLSS2002 was divided into two parts. In the first part, asmall questionnaire (36 pages) was administered to about 60,000 households
and a large questionnaire (43 pages) was administered to a smaller sample ofabout 15,000 households. The large questionnaire has an expenditure module,
allowing calculation of more reliable expenditure-based estimates of living
standards. The large VHLSS2002 questionnaire is similar to the VLSS questionnaire except that some modules are not included (anthropometrics, migration, and savings and credit) and most of the other modules are simplified.
Moreover, the household questionnaire in VHLSS2002 is also simplified compared with the previous ones. However, the household questionnaire in
VHLSS2002 has a significant advantage in that it combines the main sectionsof two surveys: the household economic survey and the household living standards survey. Thus, indicators in VHLSS2002 are still compatible with previous surveys.

3. Micro-determinants of Household Welfare and Welfare
Growth
3.1. Expenditure data
The following paragraphs explain briefly how total household expenditure is computed, based on data collected from the surveys.
Total annual expenditure consists of five components:• Consumption expenditure on food and nonfood (nondurable goods)• Value of home-product food consumed• Value of goods in-kind received (such as food and housing) beside wages• Estimated used value of durable goods owned by the household

154Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam• Rental value of the dwelling occupied by the household.
To collect information, the interviewer asks household representatives
for their household expenditure on 45 food items and the value of foodstuffs
produced and consumed by the household. It is noted that the Tet holidays, theVietnamese New Year, are a special event for every household, and people
therefore tend to spend more on these days (approximately 2 weeks). Sincesome goods consumed on these days are different from usual days, additionalquestionnaires are given to obtain information of expenditure on Tet holidays
and other holidays (mostly weekend days). Expenditure on 68 nonfood items aswell as expenditure on health, education and utility expenditure are also collected. In some cases, employees may also receive goods and services from theiremployer in addition to their wages. Such payments were also considered as
expenditure and are added to consumption expenditure.
Durable goods, once purchased, will certainly increase the wellbeing of a household for a certain period of time. Of course, the well-being
cannot be completely utilized in the year of purchase. This purchase value ofthe well-being (consumption) therefore should be divided for the years following the year of purchase, using depreciation rates. The depreciation rates
are computed based on current value and purchased value. These rates areused to calculate the value of 13 different kinds of durable goods. Finally, theannual rental value of housing also makes up a large portion of expenditureand is added to the expenditure of households. Since the number of households which rent dwellings at a market rate is relatively small, for the sake ofsimplicity the annual rental value is assumed to be 3 percent of the current
estimated value of the dwelling. Summing up the above consumption expenditures yields a good measure of household welfare. Because the price of agood differs across the regions within the country, total consumption expenditure is adjusted using a regional prices table. Finally, the real total expenditure is then divided by household size to obtain real per capita household
expenditure.

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3.2. Methodology
The model used is adapted from Wodon (1999). The determinants ofhousehold welfare1 can be established by a multiple regression as follows.
log (yi)] = ßi Xi +ui ,(1)

where log (yi) is log of real expenditure per capita; and X i are categorical variables presenting characteristics of households which likely affect the expenditure per capita2.
According to Wodon (1999), due to the properties of the linear
regressions, the expected consumption levels of households obtained by conditioning on the household’s sample mean must equal the actual mean values
observed in the sample. This then provides a good way to examine the impact
of household characteristics and the return to these characteristics on growth. If
X M is denoted as the mean characteristics of all households, the growth inhousehold per capita expenditure from time t to time t+1 can be decomposed asfollows:
Growth≈E t+1[log(YM)]-E t[log(YM)]=(ßMt+1-ßMt)X tM+ßMt(XMt+1-X tM)+U.

(2)

In equation (2), (ßM -ßM )X M represents the impact of changes of
t+1

t

t

returns to those characteristics; ßMt(XMt+1-X tM) represents the impact of changing
characteristics of the household.

Expenditure is chosen as proxy for household welfare because expenditure is a good proxy for permanent income and thus also for long-term average well-being (Balisacan et al., 2003). For example, a low-income household can withdraw its savings or borrow money to consume and maintainits relative living standard. In contrast, a high-income but highly indebted household has to cut
down on part of its income to pay off the debt. Moreover, data on expenditure are less difficult togather than those on income, especially for developing countries where self-employed individuals
are reluctant to provide their earnings precisely. Thus, in this study, as notably used before, household expenditure per capita also is employed as an approximation for household welfare.
2
In this paper, independent variables used include: (1) Sex of the household head (Male or Female);(2) Area in which household resides (Urban or Rural); (3) Regions (divided into 8 regions: Red
River Delta, North East, North West, North Central Coast, South Central Coast, Central Highlands,
South East, and Mekong River Delta); (4) Education level of household head (categorized in sevenlevels: Never, Primary School, Junior High School, High School, Technical Training, Vocational
Training, and College or Higher); (5) Occupation of household head (categorized in seven kinds ofjobs, including White Collar, Sales/Service, Agriculture, Skilled Worker, Unskilled Worker, andOther Not Working); (6) Ethnicity of household head (actually, there are 54 ethnic majorities in the
country, but for the sake of simplicity, ethnicity is divided in three groups: Vietnamese, Chinese,and Others); (7) Religion of household head (like ethnicity, religion is classified into 3 main religious affiliations: Buddhist, None, and Others); and (8) Other variables such as age and age-squareof household head as well as log of household size are also added.
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Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

3.3. Utilizing cross-sectional data for analysis
The cross-sectional estimates using data from VLSS9293,
VLSS9798, and VLHSS2002 are shown in Table 1. There were no difference in
expenditure between the households with male heads and the ones with female
heads; the fact that the coefficients of household heads are male in all three
years shows no statistical significance. Yet, the ethnicity of household heads
appears to be an important factor.
The Chinese account for only a small portion of the population (1.85
percent in VLSS9293) but had higher living standards than did the Vietnamese.
Specifically, households with heads who are Chinese spent 24 percent3 more in
1993 and about 19.5 percent more in 1998 than households headed by Vietnamese. Households headed by minorities other than the Chinese had lower
standards of living when compared to Vietnamese households.
It is unsurprising that we found higher spending in households locatedin the urban areas than those of the rural areas. Table 1 also highlights that people living in regions other than the North Central Coast, with the exception of
the North West region and the Central Highlands region in 2002, enjoyed ahigher well-being than those of the North Central Coast region; however, thedegree of benefit diminished during the period 1993–1998 except for in theSouth East region. In detail, in 1993, expenditure per capita of households in
the South East was 57 percent higher than those of the base region—the North
Central Coast; in 1998, the difference was up to around 66 percent and about 50
percent in 2002. For the Mekong River Delta region, the expenditure of households in 1998 was still higher than that of the North Central Coast region but it
decreased at its sharpest rate from 53 percent in 1993 to 25 percent in 1998.
This decrease was probably due to the severe typhoon in late 1997, although thedifference had recovered only slightly to 28 percent by 2002.
The results show the returns of education in a trend as expected: higher education levels correlate with higher standards of living. For example, inSince the dependent variable is in the form of a logarithm, the difference is exp(coefficient). Here,exp(0.2145) =1.239, so that the difference is nearly 24 percent. Other comparisons are made in thesame way3

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1993, households with the heads completing a university or higher degree spent
51 percent more than those in which the heads only finished primary school.
The same difference also was found in 1998. Less improvement was seen inhouseholds with the heads having a high school degree. They only spent 21 and158

Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

19 percent in 1993 and 1998, respectively—spending which was higher thanthose households with heads who only finished primary school. In 2002, thesedifferences were still evident but the magnitudes were much smaller.
Usually, it is expected that people involved in white collar jobs orbusiness work as well as skilled laborers have a higher standard of living compared with those engaged in agricultural and blue collar jobs. The findings ofVietnamese households during this period, without exception, support thisexpectation. As shown in Table 1, individuals living in households with a head
who had a white collar job or a job related to sales/services had a higher expenditure per capita compared to those of the reference occupation—agriculture—
and also benefited more than those living in households with a head working inother job categories. However, in 2002 the differences in spending between
households with the head being farmers or working in the agricultural sector
and other jobs were not evident. It is possibly the case that in 2002, households
headed by farmers and other agricultural employees were gradually catching up
with the expenditure levels of households of other occupational categories.
However, in order to come to a precise conclusion, this finding should be further investigated by using panel data as well as incorporating data of the threesurveys, which are estimated in the following sections.
It is worth noting that the “other not working” category in the regression includes not only the unemployed but also those who were retired and notworking for any reason (e.g., illness, leave) at the time of interviewing. Hence,
one may find that the households headed by individuals adhering to this group
had higher living standards than those of the base category.
The age of the household head also affected the expenditure of thathousehold, with higher spending for older household heads, but negative coefficients of age_square of the household head in the regressions imply that thisdisparity will actually decrease at a certain age, which is what we expected.
Importantly, one should be careful when interpreting negative coefficients of the variable LogHHsize without taking account of the estimate ofequivalence scales as suggested by Deaton (1997). This does not mean thathouseholds with more members tend to have lower expenditure per capita than
do those with fewer members: if we substitute total expenditure per capita withanother welfare indicator and divide total household expenditure by “adult-

159

Tran Duy Dongscale equivalents,” the result is likely to change (Wodon, 1999; Glewwe et al.,2000).
3.4. Micro-determinants of expenditure growth
Table 2 presents micro-determinants of expenditure growth of the two
periods 1993–1998 and 1998–2002 using (2) in the methodology based on the
results of Table 1.

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According to the approximation in (2), change of return to characteristics equals to (ßMt+1-ßMt)X tM , and thus change of return to a characteristic during period 1993-1998 equals to the coefficient of that characteristic in 1998
minus the coefficient of that characteristic in 1993 and multiplied by the meanof that characteristic in 1993 (as shown in Table 1). Moreover, based on (2) we
can see that the change due to change in characteristic equals to ßMt(XMt+1-X tM) ,and thus change in characteristic of a characteristic during the period 19931998 equals to the mean of that characteristic in 1998 minus the mean of thatcharacteristic in 1993 multiplied by the coefficient of that characteristic in
1993. Calculations for other characteristics of period 1998-2002 are made in thesame way.
From Table 2, some important things are noted. Most changes in
expenditure per capita in eight regions were due to changes in the returns to living in different regions in both periods.
The same story held for education and occupation. Most changes in
expenditure per capita associated with education and occupation of the household head were attributed to the change in returns to these characteristics rather
than the changing of those characteristics. The results are understandable sinceover time more household heads completing a higher degree of schooling will
put pressure on the wage market.
Similarly, the change in expenditure attributed to gender and ethnicity
also came mostly from changes in the returns to those characteristics
3.5. Pooling data for analysis
From the regressions of cross-sectional data, we can only examine thedeterminants of household expenditure in a single year. By pooling samples
collected from the same population at different periods, we can earn more accurate estimators and test statistics with more power when compared to samplesof single cross-sectional data because we can take advantage of the large sample size at different points in time. The VLSS9293, VLSS9798, and
VHLSS2002 covered 4,799, 5,999, and 29,532 households, respectively, so thatthe pooled sample covers 40,330 households in three years, which is a large
sample for deriving more precise estimators.
As can be seen in Table 3, which reports the results of the regres-161

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sions, the findings are consistent with those obtained in cross-sectional regressions in terms of the sign as well as the magnitude of each categorical variable:
occupation, education of the household heads, and geographical locations were
important determinants of expenditure deriving from economic growth. The

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Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

type of occupation and level of education of the head defined the degree towhich the household gained benefits from economic growth.
There is only difference in that households headed by males had
lower standards of living compared to those headed by females. This result differs from the finding in the cross-sectional regressions with no statistical significance for this variable, suggesting that the returns to this category fluctuatedover time.
3.6. Which characteristics determine the consumption of households in different socio-economic groups?
By using an econometric method, we are able to find out which characteristics determine the differences of expenditure between the poor and therich households, or in other words, among socio-economic groups during theperiod.
Since VLSS9293 contains communal characteristics of the rural areas
only, there is no such data on the urban areas and thus we cannot take advantage of the panel data. In the VLSS9798 commune data were collected in bothrural and urban areas, so in this section only data from the VLSS9798 are used
to investigate the determinants of household welfare of different socio-economic households. The regression results with the addition of communal characteristics4 are put in the same table for analysis.
Table 4 reports the results of the regressions of each quintile. One
important finding is that for poor households (households belonging to the 1st
and 2nd quintiles) and the middle class (the 3rd quintile), factors, such as thelevel of education of the head and the region where the household resides, aswell as communal facilities, such as market and electricity, are important for
determining its living standard. For rich households (households belonging toCommune near a factory (apply value 1 for a commune which has at least one factory nearby; 0 if
there no factory near the commune); Commune having traditional handicraft (apply value 1 for acommune which has traditional handicraft; 0 if there is no traditional handicraft); Road passable bycars (apply value 1 for a commune if there is a road that cars can use; 0 if there is a road but cars cannot use it); Electricity (apply value 1 if commune has electricity; 0 if electricity is not supplied in thecommune); Market (apply value 1 if there is at least one market in the commune; 0 if there is nomarket in the commune); and Water-way transportation (apply value 1 if the commune has waterway transportation; 0 if there is no water-way transportation).

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Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

the 4th and 5th quintiles) the level of education and type of job of the head are
more important in defining their living standards. Communal characteristics,
such as the availability of a market or electricity, play no role in affecting theirexpenditure because most of the rich are living in urban areas, so facilities,
such as electricity and market, are common, while in rural area those facilities
are important. For example, in the poorest quintile, households headed by anindividual who has completed high school spent 7 percent more than households with the head completing only primary school. Interestingly, in the poorest quintile households headed by someone having a university or higher
degree had a lower standard of living compared to those of households headed
by someone having only a primary school degree. Similarly, households livingin areas where there was a market and electricity spent 4.6 percent and 8.1 percent more, respectively, than households residing in areas without such facilities.
Regarding ethnicity, most quintiles show that households with thehead being of an ethnic minority had lower standards of living when comparedto those headed by Vietnamese. For all quintiles, gender and religion of thehead show no impact on the expenditure of the households.
Importantly, when one looks at the results, one may notice that insome cases, the R-squared values are somewhat small. Statistically, the value ofR-squared represents how much variance of the dependent variable can be collectively explained by the independent variables. Since the number of households included in VLSS9798 is 5,999 households, but only 4,818 households
qualified for the test, these households were divided into 5 small samples basedon expenditure quintiles and then the regressions were done with each sample.
This way of regression further lowered the number of households involved in165Tran Duy Dongeach regression, which then obviously affected the precision of the regressions.
This suggests that a more adequate answer about the determinants of expenditure per capita of each expenditure quintile can only be obtained from muchlarger datasets, which we can obtain in the cross-sectional regressions (Vijverberg, 1998 and Tran, 2000).
3.7. Who benefits from economic growth?
For a poor country like Vietnam where the disparity of development
between rural and urban areas is huge, it is expected that some determinants ofexpenditure in rural areas will differ from those of urban areas. For example, inurban areas, facilities like electricity, roads and telecommunications are common, but for rural areas, especially for mountainous areas, accessing thosekinds of facilities is not easy, not only because of their limited financial capacity but also because of the shortage of those facilities, which is likely affected by
the policies of the government. Therefore, it is essential to find out which characteristics determine the consumption of the rural areas (in which most of thepoor reside), which then will help us to draw up policy suggestions. Moreover,in previous sections, we can only indicate the determinants of consumption ofhouseholds or in other words, we could only state that the living standard ofhouseholds attached to certain characteristics of the heads was higher or lower
when compared to other households. One thing we have not still investigated iswhat kind of households gained more benefit from economic growth (or inother words, enjoyed improved consumption) when compared to other households during the period. Since 4,302 households were interviewed in both
VLSS9293 and VLSS9798, this question can be answered by regressing thechange of real expenditure per capita between two years 1993 and 1998 on the
pre-determined characteristics of households in 1993. In order to have a moreinsightful image, some different variables from the previous sections are added
into regressions including:166

Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam• Number of HH members working in exporting industry is total number ofmembers of each household working in exporting industry 5• Number of HH members working in importing industry is total number ofmembers of each household working in importing industry6• Number of HH members working in service industry is total number ofmembers of each household working in service industry7.

Export industry includes agriculture, fishing, food processing, garments and textiles, shoes andleather, wood products and furniture, and electrical and electronic products.
6
Import industry includes tobacco, paper, coke, petroleum products, chemicals and chemical products, rubber and plastics products, other non-metallic mineral products, basic metals, fabricatedmetal products, machinery and equipment, and transportation vehicles.
7
Service industry includes forestry, mining, printing, and other services.
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3.7.1. In rural areas
As can be seen in Table 5, in the rural areas households with the head
having a higher level education improved their living standard by a greater margin from 1993 to 1998 than those where the household head had a lower levelof education. For example, households headed by individuals having a university or higher degree improved their expenditure 42 percentage points8 ceteris

Exp(0.3529)=1.423. Since the dependent variable is log of the change in expenditure between two
years, the improvement is about 42 percentage points. Other comparisons are done in the same way.
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Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

paribus higher than those headed by someone having a primary school degree.
Regarding region, households situated in the South East regions experienced improvement in consumption 13 percentage points more than households in the reference region—the North Central region. Those households in
the Mekong River Delta improved their standard of living 15.4 percentage
points less than households in the North Central region, which is consistent
with what we found in the previous sections.
Turning to occupation of the household head, we find that householdswith the head having a job such as white collar, skilled worker, or work in thesales/service sector and being skilled workers improved their standards of living
less than those involved in the agricultural sector in both years. In detail, households with the head involved in agricultural jobs improved their expenditure 5.2,
12.7, and 15.3 percentage points more than those with the head having a whitecollar, skilled and sales/services job, and being skilled laborers, respectively. Thismeans that during period 1993–1998, economic growth rewarded more benefit
for the farmer and those working in the agriculture sector. This still appears to bea good finding since most households involved in agriculture were poor.
Other findings are that households headed by a female improved theirwelfare more than those headed by a male. Households headed by ethnicities
other than Chinese experienced a lower improvement in welfare when compared to those headed by the Vietnamese.
Regarding religious characteristics, those households headed bysomeone adhering to no religion improved their welfare 6.1 percentage points
less than those with the head adhering to Buddhism, but 5.6 percentage points
more than those with the head adhering to a religion other than Buddhism.
Turning to communal characteristics, only the coefficient of the roadpassable by cars variable shows a positive statistical significance, meaning that
individuals residing in communes having at least one road passable by car
improved their welfare 12.8 percentage points more than those living in communes
without any road passable by car. This is understandable because communes withroads passing through have more chances to trade with other communes.
Interestingly, communes with more cultivated land per capita had alower standard of living, which is contrary to the conventional thought that
because households in rural areas given more cultivated land can diversify their169

Tran Duy Dongcrop as well as increase their output, they should improve their living standard
more than those with less cultivated land. This finding is difficult to interpret on
the face of the data.
3.7.2. In urban areas
Regarding education and region characteristics, findings are consistent with those found in rural areas. However, there were differences in that inurban areas, occupation, ethnicity, and religion of the head of households
showed no statistical significance in the period 1993–1998. The exception washouseholds with the head adhering to Buddhism, which improved their welfare
less than those with the head adhering to no religion.
Trade variables are presented in Model 2. Note that, in Model 2, somevariables (i.e., hhsize and occupation of HH Head) are dropped from the regression because they likely auto-correlate with the variable number of household
members, which would lead to inconsistent results if included.
The results show that there was strong impact of trade liberalization
on household welfare. As is evident, trade liberalization actually rewarded
greater benefits to those working in the exporting industries as both coefficientsof Number of HH members working in the exporting industry in the regression
with rural area sample and all sample are statistically significant at 1 percent.
On average, those working in the export industry increased 2.75 percentage
points from 1993 to 1998. This result is expected because the export turnovers
increased remarkably from 1993 to 1998, from US$4 billion in 1994 to US$9.4
billion in 1998 (GSO, 2001), which certainly brought positive effects to thosepeople working in the industry. Also, there is evidence that those working in theservice sector also improved their well-being from 1993 to 1998. Meanwhile,
there is no evidence of the improvement for those people working in theimporting sector.

4. Economic Growth, Social Welfare, and Equality
4.1. Income data and related issues
Household income in these surveys came from five main sources:
wages, agriculture, non-farm self employment, remittances, and other incomes.

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Wage incomes include cash and in-kind revenues that household members
received from both main and secondary jobs during the most recent 12 months.
Agriculture income comes from farm and non-farm work, in which non-farmwork includes producing fishery and other water products as well as processing crop products. Because in some cases, cost and revenue from agricultural
work are calculated in quantity and not in cash as normally is the case, they
were then converted into Vietnamese dong using the respective prices collected by the price questionnaires. Income from non-farm self employment wascollected from data on non-farm self employment. Remittances were collectedbased on the questionnaires on assistance received by household members during the most recent 12 months. Finally, other income includes income fromgovernment subsidies, pensions, scholarships, insurance payments, and interest.
If income is to be used to compare social welfare at different pointsof time, the income used for analysis should be real income. To make incomeof different years comparable, household income from the three surveys firstis divided by the monthly overall price index at January 1998 prices. Moreover, in one survey, the prices were different among regions, thus the income
once again is deflated by the regional price indices, which were obtained in
the price questionnaires, to derive real income. The real income of a household then is divided by its number of household members to obtain real
income per capita.
In many studies because of the shortage of data, gross income athousehold level was adopted to examine the changes of inequality and wellbeing of households. However, this method may lead to incorrect estimatessince households differ from one another in size as well as composition. Thus,
it is difficult to identify whether a small household with lower income is poorer
than a large household with higher income. The more accurate judgment should
be based on real income per capita. Luckily, in these surveys, data are collectedfrom each household member, and thus we can use real income per capita,
which is calculated as discussed above, for the purpose of ranking the levels ofhousehold welfare.
Nevertheless, as pointed out by Deaton (1997), and Chatterijee et al.
(2003), using real income per capita as a unit for welfare comparison, although171

Tran Duy Dong

appearing more advantageous when compared to unadjusted income (i.e., grossincome), is still likely to provide inappropriate results since the needs of household members are distinctive from each other if one classifies them by characteristics such as sex or age. The problem is completely resolved if an equivalent-adult scale is used to adjust real income.
In practice, equivalent-adult scales were employed in many studies
using various methods, such as the consumption pattern or nutrition requirements. Unfortunately, to my best knowledge, no equivalent-adult scale has been
applied in Vietnamese studies, and constructing a new equivalent-adult scale isbeyond the scope of this study. Thus, I assign the same weight to each household member or in other words, weight equal to 1 assigned for each household
member. The income used for analysis is real income per capita and the deciles
used in the analysis represent 10 percent of the population, not 10 percent of thehouseholds.
4.2. Methodology
In contrast to the previous section, income data of the surveys aretaken advantage of to identify the changes of inequality among social economic
groups and then an attempt is made to investigate the changes of level of social
welfare by both ordinal and cardinal methods. The former method is based on
the dominances of ordinary Lorenz and general Lorenz curves, while the latter
follows the social evaluation function, which provides the complete welfare
ordering of income distributions. Moreover, with the help of the cardinal
method, the sources of the changes of level of social welfare which come frominequality and mean income effects are brought out. In this paper, social welfare is measured by income. Thus, strictly speaking, it refers to economic welfare.
The method for ranking a pair of income distributions with the samemean based on welfare grounds was introduced by Atkinson (1970). According
to his study, of the two income distributions with the same mean income, thedistribution of the dominating Lorenz curve has a higher level of per capita
social welfare. It means that a Lorenz curve dominates the other Lorenz curve if
its opposition is nearer the egalitarian curve. This expression can be describedby the theorem below.

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Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

Theorem 1: Given Z(y) and Z’(y) are two income distributions withthe same mean income 9 µ and have density functions z(y) and z’(y) respectively, in the interval ,we have:(3)

for all utility function satisfying u '(y) > 0 and u"(y) < 010, where LZ and LZ’ are
Lorenz curves constructed from distribution Z(y) and Z’(y), respectively.
However, in reality, the application of this theorem appears to be limited because we are usually more interested in comparing the social welfare oftwo societies at a given point in time, or investigating welfare changes of asociety over time. The mean incomes are not likely to be the same in these situations. In addition, the ordinary Lorenz cannot accurately explain the welfare
ordering of the two distributions if their Lorenz curves cross each other. The
reason is simply that we may find two concave utilities which then bring about
different orderings.
In order to rank distributions with different mean incomes, Theorem 1
was revised by Shorrocks (1983) based on the generalized Lorenz (GL) curve.
If the Lorenz curve of a distribution with mean µ is L(p) then the GL of that distribution is defined as µ L(p). Theorem 2 can be stated as follows.
Theorem 2: Given Z(y) and Z’(y) are two income distributions withthe mean income µ ' and and have density functions z(y) and z’(y) respectively,in the interval

we have:(4)

for all strictly concave utility functions.
While the GL curve dominance can resolve the limitation of the ordinary Lorenz curve in comparing two distributions with different mean incomes,
it still cannot completely resolve the remaining limitation of the ordinary
Lorenz curve, i.e., the intersection of the two Lorenz curves, because it is possible that GL curves may also cross each other at other points, thereby generating

It is noted that the theorem is true when the dominating Lorenz curve has a higher level of mean
income.
10
In assumption of the view point of an income seeking and inequality adverse person.
9173

Tran Duy Dongother different welfare rankings of the two distributions. Thus, one important
point is worth noting that both the ordinary Lorenz and the generalized Lorenz
curves provide only partial ordering of income distributions. However, there isa difference between the two curves in that the ordinary Lorenz curve provides
the relative economic positions among population groups (the poorest to richestgroup), while the generalized Lorenz curve presents the absolute economic
positions of the same population.
Because both the Lorenz and GL curves can provide only partial welfare ordering of income distributions, we must rely on a cardinal social evaluation function through assigning specific values to all possible income distributions in order to obtain a complete ranking based on welfare grounds. The
abbreviated social evaluation function was introduced to help evaluate thesocial welfare with small arguments that summarize the complete income distribution. The function is formed as:(5)–where y is the average income of the society, andis the meas-ure of inequality. Equation (5) satisfies the following conditions:(6)
The conditions provided in (6) imply that when the average income
increases, social welfare increases holding inequality unchanged; and holding
the average income unchanged, when inequality increases, social welfare
decreases.
Sen (1976) introduced a social evaluation function (SEF) whichshows the relationship between the average income of a society and its inequality indicator, which is represented by the Gini coefficient as follows.
(7)
where T is the Gini coefficient of the income distribution. Equation (7) also satisfies the conditions in (6).
Therefore, we can investigate the changes of the social welfare overtime by differentiating equation (5) with respect to174

Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

time t to get .

If the same derivation is applied to equation (7), we obtain:(8)
For the changes between two discrete points in time, equation (8) canbe approximated as follows.
(9)

The former part of equation (9) denotes the changes of social welfare
due to the changes of efficiency, and the latter part presents the changes due tochanges of equity.
4.3. Empirical results and analysis
4.3.1. Ordinary Lorenz curveFirst, it is necessary to reiterate that in this study, we constructed theLorenz curve based on cumulative shares of income per capita in the various
deciles of population instead of cumulative share of income as an ordinary
Lorenz curve.

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In order to build the Lorenz curve, we first calculate the sum of real
income per capita of each decile. After having all the sums of the deciles, we
obtain the total sum of cumulative income per capita by adding the sum of real
income per capita of all quintiles.
The sum of real income per capita of each decile is then divided by
the total sum of cumulative income per capita to obtain the real income percapita share of each decile. The share of each decile then is cumulatively added176

Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

from the poorest to the richest decile to form Table 6. Based on Table 6, we caneasily draw the ordinary Lorenz curve, which is described by Figure 1.
From Table 6, if we look at the Gini coefficients of three years, we cansee that inequality increased sharply from 1993 to 1998 but declined considerablyfrom 1998 to 2002. This means that in 1993 and 2002, generally the relative position of the bottom 90 percent of the population was better off when compared tothat of 1998 with the only exception being for the lowest decile, for which theincome share was lower in 1993 when compared to that of 1998 (Table 7).
For social welfare ranking, because the mean income changed acrossthe period, we are unable to make any judgment on the social welfare among
these years if we only base this on the dominance of the ordinary Lorenz curves(Theorem 1). However, we can draw some general statements on inequality
from the ordinary Lorenz curves.
Figure 1 shows that the Lorenz curves of the year 2002 absolutely
dominated those of the year 1998. Thus, we can conclude that inequality in2002 was greatly improved when compared to that of 1998 by any inequality
measure which satisfies the Pigou-Dalton transfer condition. Note that, PigouDalton transfer sensitivity implies that under this criterion, the transfer ofincome from the rich to the poor reduces the measured inequality. While theLorenz curve of 1993 dominates that of 1998 from the 2nd to 10th deciles andonly crosses at the bottom decile, there is also no doubt that inequality in 1993
was lower than that of 1998 by any inequality measure which satisfies the transfer condition. For the two years 1993 and 2002, since the Lorenz curve of 2002
dominates that of 1993 up to the 5th decile but is dominated by 1993 at theremaining deciles, the inequality comparison of the two curves can be judged
only by looking at the size of their Gini coefficients.
For more details of the inequality comparison, we must look at Table
7, which presents the relative income share of different population deciles. For
the top decile, the relative income share increased sharply from 31.79 percent in1993 to 35.08 percent in 1998 but decreased to 32.03 percent in 2002, while thebottom decile experienced an increased though modest trend across the time.
For the remaining deciles, the relative incomes decreased from 1993 to 1998,
but then increased slightly.
Because the mean income changed during this period, we cannot

177Tran Duy Dong

compare the social welfare of these years using the ordinary Lorenz curve.
Thereby, in order to evaluate social welfare we must rely on the GL curve discussed in Theorem 2.
4.3.2. Generalized Lorenz (GL) curve

the GL––
ordinates belong to the range (0; y), where y is the mean income of the distribution; i = 1,…, n is the position of each person in the income distribution; P is
total number of individuals in the distribution; yi is the income of ith person in
the distribution; andis cumulated income up to the ith person. In thispaper, we will construct GL as follows. First, we calculate the mean income percapita of each year and then multiply these numbers with the cumulative
income share in Table 6 to obtain Table 8. The real mean income per capita of
1993, 1998, and 2002 are 2,048,200; 3,121,600; and 3,881,600 Vietnamese
Dong (VND), respectively.
It is important to note that the numbers presented in Table 8 are not
the average income of the cumulative proportion of population. The GL curves
for the three years, drawn based on Table 8, are presented in Figure 2. The figure shows that the curve of GL2002 absolutely dominates those of GL1998 and178

Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

GL1993. Thus, according to Theorem 2, social welfare in 2002 was higher
when compared to that of 1998 and that of 1993 for all strictly concave utility
functions. In the case of 1998 and 1993, the curve of GL1998 also dominates
GL1993, meaning that total social welfare of 1998 also improved against that of
1993. At this point, we can conclude that the economic growth increased social
welfare from 1993 to 2002.
These judgments are reconfirmed in Table 8. The cumulative real
incomes of all deciles in 2002 were higher when compared to those of 1998 and1993. The same statement can be made for 1998 in comparison with 1993.
While the GL curve dominances in this paper provide complete11
orderings of social welfare of the period, it is still essential to have concrete

Actually, Vietnam in this study is a special case because no GL curves cross each other. If the GL
curves cross each other, we have to rely on a cardinal social evaluation function for complete ordering comparison.

11

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Tran Duy Dong

estimated values of the social welfare, which can be calculated based on equation (6). The estimated values are reported in Table 9 for comparison. Social
welfare absolutely increased during the period, from 1269.8 (in 1993) to 1716.8(in 1998) and then to 2290.1 (in 2002), despite the fact that inequality firstincreased in the period 1993–1998 but fell in the period 1998–2002.
The results also reveal that in the early period of trade liberalization(1993–1998), the income increase sharply outpaced that of the period
1998–2002, but the negative impact of higher inequality in 1993–1998 led to anincrease in total social welfare only relatively the same as that in 1998–2002,
which is examined in more detail in Table 10.
Table 10 presents compositions of the changes of social welfare during the periods, which are calculated by equation (8). For the first period
1993–1998, mean income increased with the rise in inequality. While the former had a positive impact on total social welfare, the latter had an affect in the
opposite direction. However, the combination of the two effects still led to anincrease in social welfare.
Turning to the period 1998–2002, the combination of the two positiveeffects of the increase of real mean income, accompanied by a decline ininequality, increased total social welfare absolutely to levels well above thoseof the period 1993–1998.
Finally, for the whole period from 1993–2002, we find that mean
income increased remarkably with a slight increase in inequality; the magnitudeof the former was much bigger than that of the latter, which then led to anincrease of total social welfare.
In short, using the dominance of Lorenz and generalized Lorenz
curves, we find that economic growth—for which trade liberalization contributed the most—increased the real cumulative income per capita of all population deciles, which then led to increases in social welfare during the period
1993–2002. The estimates show that in the period 1993–1998, the increase inincome was accompanied by a rapid rise in inequality, while in the latter period(1998–2002), income increased in parallel with greater equality in income.
Moreover, with the help of the social evaluation function, we are able to have acomplete welfare ranking of the income distributions of the three years in the
period, showing an increasing trend from 1993 to 2002. Also, the sources of180

Micro-determinants of Household Welfare, Social Welfare, and Inequality in Vietnam

changes of social welfare were brought out in the paper.

5. Concluding Remarks
The decision of the government to adopt Doi moi (renovation) policies in 1986 appears to have been a good one which brought about big changes
in the standard of living of the Vietnamese people. Social welfare also
improved remarkably from 1993 to 2002 in absolute terms. However, theincrease in income was also accompanied by a rapid rise of inequality from1993 to 1998 while the inequality fell slightly in the latter part of the period
1998–2002. Thus, social welfare increased more in the period 1998–2002 incomparison to that of 1993–1998.
There was evidence that the benefits were not equally distributed
among the Vietnamese households. An examination by expenditure data showsthat those living in communes with facilities such as electricity, a market, and aroad passable by cars were able to make the most of opportunities from economic growth and improve their standard of living more than those living incommunes without such facilities were able to do. This finding emphasized theimportance of such facilities in improving the living standard of the poor.
Economic growth provided greater benefits for those people withhigher levels of education and those working in the export industry. Individuals
involved in the service sector such as in white collar or sales/service jobs or
those who had professional skills benefited from a higher absolute living stan-

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Tran Duy Dong

dard than farmers and others engaged in agriculture. However, utilizing thepanel data we also found the good news that there is evidence that the living
standards of farmers improved more than those of people from other sectors
from 1993–1998.
Geographical location appeared to play an important role in determining the welfare of households, with more benefits for those living in the South
East and the Red River Delta regions while other regions like North Central,
Northern Uplands, and Central Highlands, where most of the poor and ethnic
minorities resided, received fewer benefits from economic growth.
The findings reveal the imbalance in development among regions andin different welfare received between the poor and the rich, and between ruraland urban areas in the country, suggesting that the less developed regions andthe poor deserve to be made a higher priority in the policies of the government.

References

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Balisacan, A.; M. P. Ernesto; and E. B. E. Gemma. 2003. “Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction in Vietnam.” ERD Working Paper Series No. 42. Manila: AsianDevelopment Bank (ADB).
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Data, 1984–1998.” in Amiel, Y. and Bishop, J. A., (Eds.) Inequality, Welfare andPoverty: Theory and Measurement. Research on Economic Inequality, Volume 9,
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Deaton, A. 1997. The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconometric Approach to
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General Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO). 2001. Statistical Yearbook 2000. Hanoi:
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the 1990s? An Analysis of Poverty and Inequality Trends.” Policy Research Working Paper 2275. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.
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Sussex. Brighton: University of Sussex.
Niimi, Y.; V. Puja; and A. Winters. 2003. “Trade Liberalization and Poverty Dynamics
in Vietnam.” PRUS Working Paper No. 17, Poverty Research Unit at Sussex.
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Shorrocks, A. F. 1983. “Ranking Income Distributions.” Economica, 50: 3-17.
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Transition. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.
Wodon, Q. 1999. “Micro Determinants of Consumption, Poverty, Growth, and Inequality in Bangladesh.” Policy Research Working Paper No. 2076 Washington, D.C.:
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Wooldridge, J. 2002. Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Chapter 7
The Elderly Population in Vietnam during
Economic Transformation: An Overview
Giang Thanh Long and Wade Donald Pfau

Abstract
Many studies have suggested that under the context of high economic growth and strong
flows of laborers from rural to urban areas, living arrangements of elderly people, particularly elderly women, and family relations will be more vulnerable to a variety of socialand economic risks. This paper, using the Vietnam (Household) Living Standard Surveys
for 1992/93, 1997/98, 2002, and 2004, will examine the issue by decomposing the elderly
population in Vietnam with regard to various aspects of aging. With an investigation ofnumerous variables such as education, household living arrangements, and housing conditions, it is found that family structures have generally been maintained in Vietnam,
although social and economic contexts have changed rapidly since Doi moi. We find a relatively high proportion of elderly people living with their children, particularly their married sons. In addition, the elderly are not simply dependents in the households; indeed,
they are still contributing to the households in various ways. A detailed decomposition ofdata on the elderly people, however, shows that women have certain disadvantages incomparison with men due to lower education, higher levels of widowhood, and living
alone. There is also a big disparity between elderly people living in urban and rural areas,
and between the elderly populations of different regions. Another striking finding is thatduring the past decade, the poverty rates for elderly people were actually lower than thosefor nonelderly people, and the highest poverty rates occurred among very young or very
old people.

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Giang Thanh Long and Wade Donald Pfau

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the participants of the Second Vietnam
Development Forum (VDF)-Tokyo Conference on the Development of Vietnam on 15 July, 2006 at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies(GRIPS), Tokyo; the VDF-Hanoi Seminar Series on 19 August, 2006 at theVietnam Development Forum (VDF) in Hanoi; and the Fifth International Conference of the Japanese Economic Policy Association (JEPA) on 2–3 December, 2006 at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, for providing various invaluable comments and suggestions.
We are thankful to a number of colleagues from the National Economics University, Hanoi and the Vietnam National Academy of Social Sciences for spending ample time with us discussing data analysis and policy
implications.
We are also grateful to Dr. Armando Barrientos, a Research Fellow at
the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, the UK, for
his insightful comments as well as constructive encouragements to pursue
poverty issues of the elderly population in Vietnam.

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The Elderly Population in Vietnam during Economic Transformation: An Overview

1. Introduction
The elderly populations in many countries are growing and will continue to grow in the coming years, both in absolute numbers and as a percentageof the population. According to the medium-variant population projections of
the United Nations (2004), there are about 610 million people aged 60 and over(or 10 percent of the world population in 2000), and this number is expected to
grow to around 1.9 billion people (or 22 percent of the world population) in
2050. These demographic trends have mostly resulted from decreasing fertility
rates and increasing life expectancy. In addition to such demographic changes,
some studies on the elderly population, such as those of Mason (1992) and
Schwarz (2003), raised a concern that economic transformation with urbanization and increasing migration might weaken the traditional family structure,
which would leave more elderly people without the traditional support and carefrom their families.
Vietnam, as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, isindeed experiencing the changes just described. The medium-variant projections of the United Nations (2004) indicate that the elderly population in Vietnam will increase significantly from 7.5 percent of the total population in 2005
to about 26 percent in 2050. The demographic dependency ratio will be driven
mostly by the elderly dependency ratio as the child population will increase at a
slower pace. Of the current elderly population, a majority are living in rural anddisadvantaged areas. Moreover, swift economic transformation since Doi moi
has had significant impacts on all areas of society, especially with the changesof economic structure from agriculture-based to industrial production, andurbanization with strong flows of laborers from rural to urban areas. Though
great successes, such as rapid poverty reduction and considerable improvementof living standards, have been widely acknowledged, many groups of people,
including the elderly, are still living in poor and vulnerable conditions (Le etal., 2005). Given the low coverage of the social security systems in Vietnam,
the situation may become worse if there is not an appropriate response from thegovernment to these continuing changes. Therefore, studies of various socialand economic aspects of the elderly population need to be carried out so as toenable appropriate responses for the social welfare policies.

187Giang Thanh Long and Wade Donald Pfau

Guided by such research needs, this paper seeks to quantify the extent
and the evolution of the elderly population in Vietnam by using the Vietnam(Household) Living Standards Surveys for 1992/93, 1997/98, 2002, and 2004.
Specifically, the paper will answer such questions as how are the living
arrangements of the elderly changing; are the elderly contributing to theirhouseholds, and are there important differences between regions of the country,
or between urban and rural residents?
To accomplish these goals, we first review the existing studies on theelderly population in Vietnam. Then, we present our data and methodology, as
well as advantages and limitations of the data. This is followed by our analysis
and implications for social welfare policies. The last section will present concluding remarks and directions for further studies.
In providing an overview of the Vietnamese elderly population during
economic transformation, some key findings of this paper include:• The elderly population has grown during the past decade, as has the number of elderly living alone.
• We consider three types of elderly households: those where an elderly person is the head of the household, where the elderly is dependent on others,
and where the elderly is living alone. We find that the increase in the elderly living alone was offsetting households where the elderly weredependent on others.
• Women experience more disadvantages, such as widowhood and lack of
education.
• Data on working status and housework show that the elderly people werestill active contributors to the households in various ways.
• Poverty rates have been falling in each of the surveys, though the highest
poverty rates remained among the very young and very old.
• Housing conditions for the elderly have significantly improved over time.
• Generally, the elderly of Vietnam did not face a situation worse than that
faced by younger people. Family bonds appeared to remain strong, and theelderly were taken care of.
• Age 60 is too young to be defined as elderly. The hardships of old age do
not come until later ages.

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The Elderly Population in Vietnam during Economic Transformation: An Overview

2. Previous Studies on the Elderly Population in Vietnam:
A Review
Research on the elderly population in Vietnam has grown rapidly inthe past decade, and different survey data have been used to analyze the elderly
people and their households. For example, Hirschman and Vu (1996) used the1991 Vietnam Life History Survey, which was a survey of 403 households during January–March 1991 in four areas, i.e., a rural village and an urban area innorthern Vietnam (in the Red River Delta), and a rural village and an urban area
in southern Vietnam (in the Mekong River Delta). The purpose of their study
was to analyze the impacts of Confucian thought on contemporary family andhousehold structure, and find out how these impacts varied between the tworegions.
Another set of two regional surveys on Vietnamese persons aged 60
and over has been used extensively by many studies, such as Truong et al.
(1997) and Knodel et al. (2000). These surveys, which were conducted in the
Red River Delta (including Hanoi) in 1996, and in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC)
and its six adjacent provinces in 1997, could provide various information aboutrural and urban diversity, household composition, and household relations interms of support and care.
In addition to the above microdata surveys, a variety of studies also
used larger survey samples to accomplish their research goals. Bui et al. (1999)
used the 1994 Vietnam Inter-censal Demographic Survey in combination withthose regional surveys to explore living arrangements of the elderly in two
regions. To compare living arrangements of the elderly and their households
over time, Knodel and Truong (2002) used the 5 percent public use sample ofthe 1989 Census and the 3 percent public use sample of the 1999 Census. Morerecently, Barbieri (2006) used the 3 percent public use sample of the 1999 Census and the Vietnam Living Standard Survey (VLSS) 1997/98 to analyze rates
of coresidence and flows of remittances between the elderly and their children.
Some common trends emerged from these studies even though they
drew on numerous surveys with different sizes and characteristics. First, thepopulation showed a clear aging process that was faster than official population
projections by the United Nations (Knodel and Truong, 2002). By marital sta-

189

Giang Thanh Long and Wade Donald Pfautus, all of the studies showed that majority of the elderly people (over 95 percent) were married or widowed, and widowhood was more common among
rural residents and women (Truong et al., 1997). In terms of education, which
was measured by schooling and literacy, the studies also indicated that thefemale elderly were much more disadvantaged than were their male peers, andurban residents had higher educational levels than did their rural counterparts(Friedman et al., 2002).
Second, living arrangements of the elderly and their households indicated that family relations remained strong in Vietnam despite substantialchanges in social and economic conditions. The studies all indicated that only asmall share of the elderly were living alone, and most were living with or nearby their children. Also, coresidence rates did vary between regions and areas(Hirschman and Vu, 1996; Bui et al., 1999; Friedman et al., 2002). Among
those who were living with adult children, a majority preferred to live with married sons, particularly in the Red River Delta (Knodel et al., 2000). In addition,
coresidence depended on marital status of the elderly, e.g., both non-married
men and non-married women were considerably more likely to live with a married child than were their currently married counterparts (Friedman et al.,2002). Among those who were not living with children, men were more likely
to live with a spouse, and women were more likely to live alone (Barbieri,
2006). Similarly, Knodel et al. (2000) showed that more than half of non-coresident elderly in the north and over two-thirds in the south lived adjacent to orvery near to a child. The situation for the childless elderly was not worse as
they lived with an adult relative or spouse, and only 12 percent of them in thenorth and a third of them in the south lived alone.
Also relevant to family relations is the support and care between theelderly and their children. Hirschman and Vu (1996) found a relatively high frequency of visiting or making contacts between adult children and their parents.
About 60 percent of adult children who lived nearby their parents saw them
daily, and most of the rest saw them at least once a week. Truong et al. (1997)
found that exchanges of food, clothes, and other goods were fairly common
between elderly parents and their children in all regions, and economic support
from within the family was more important than non-family support. Similarfindings also indicated in Bui et al. (1999) that family support from both coresi-

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The Elderly Population in Vietnam during Economic Transformation: An Overview

dent and non-coresident children was the main source of support and care forthe elderly (42 percent in the north and 66 percent in the south). The type of
support showed regional difference, as foodstuff was popular in the north, while
cash was substantial in the south. Knodel et al. (2000) also showed that children
frequently provided material support to their parents, and that there was regional difference in support type and child proximity to parents. A U-shaped relationship was observed for such provision and child proximity to parents, and it
was even more pronounced for regular provision of money and expensive
goods. Evaluating family support with such questions as whether a child is an
important source of the elderly’s income, and material transfers (food ormoney) from children to parents, Friedman et al. (2002) showed that southernelderly were more likely to report that children were main contributors tohousehold income than were northern elderly, and nonmarried elderly weremore likely to claim a child as a main contributor than were married elderly.
Moreover, the study indicated that in general that there was no clear gender pattern in the receipt of intergenerational support by the Vietnamese elderly. By
exploring gender and coresidence factors, Barbieri (2006) observed that remittance was a major alternative form of support from children to their parents;
about 20 percent of the elderly had received remittance from a non-coresident
child in the previous 12 months, 16 percent from a son, and 12 percent from adaughter. Sons tended to send support more often than did daughters (25 percent vs. less than 20 percent of all elderly households), and older elderly
received support more often than did younger elderly. Further, with multivariate
analysis, the study confirmed that women were more likely than were men to
receive from both sons and daughters (in contrast to the findings of Friedman etal., 2002), and the non-coresident elderly were more likely to receive than were
the ones coresiding with children. Urban and wealthier elderly were more likely
to receive support from their children than were their rural and poor peers. The
study then suggested that intensification of migration did not jeopardize intergenerational solidarities and that children continued to support their elderly parents, particularly in vulnerable cases.
One common and critical finding from these studies was that only amodest percentage of elderly people received pensions or welfare payments,and such payments were rarely a main source of income (Bui et al. 1999;

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Knodel and Truong, 2002). Particularly, the relative dependence of non-marriedelderly women on non-pension state payments, which were small and less frequently paid, indicated their relative vulnerability to social and economic risks.
If family support gradually erodes, maintaining the livelihood of such people
could become a greater public policy need.
A third common trend that emerged was that many elderly people
remained active, either working for various types of enterprises or doing housework. Bui et al. (1999) pointed out that the working rate of the elderly was 41
percent for the north and 35 percent for the south. By gender, Friedman et al.
(2002) showed that there was almost no gender difference in the elderly working rate in the north (42 percent for men vs. 41 percent for women), but a significant difference in the south (46 percent for men vs. 28 percent for women).
Both economic structure and culture could help explain these regional differences. In addition, Knodel and Truong (2002) found that women were less economically active for all older age groups, but were active in housework. Also,
economic activity rates among older people in urban areas were considerably
lower than those of their rural peers.
Fourth, living conditions for the elderly have clearly been improving
over time. The results from Knodel and Truong (2002) showed that housing
conditions significantly improved. More elderly people, particularly in rural
areas, were likely to access mass media such as TV and radio, use better toilets,
and have electricity as the main source of lighting.
Although these existing studies could provide informative and thorough measures on living arrangements of the Vietnamese elderly, they did not
make a distinction between the elderly who were household heads and those
who were dependents in the household, except for the study by Hirschman andVu (1996). This distinction is potentially quite important. As indicated in manystudies on the family relations in elderly households, such as Schwarz (2003)
and HelpAge International (2004), the elderly would feel confident if they
could control some resources, and family members would not consider them as
a burden. Distinguishing the role of elderly people in their households will help
to show how they are treated when their economic and social status changes.
Moreover, the reviewed studies also did not provide any information
about the poverty status of the Vietnamese elderly over time. Analysis of the192The Elderly Population in Vietnam during Economic Transformation: An Overview

elderly’s poverty incidence will provide useful information about their vulnerability relative to that of the rest of the population. This information can thenhelp the government in making appropriate social welfare policies to protect theelderly from various social and economic risks. Data limitations might be oneof the reasons for such missing analysis in the existing studies.

3. Data and Methodology
We use the Vietnam (Household) Living Standard Surveys for theyears 1992/93, 1997/98, 2002, and 2004. These surveys were conducted by theGeneral Statistics Office of Vietnam (GSO), along with other international
agencies as a part of the World Bank’s Living Standard Measurement Surveys.
Detailed descriptions of these surveys can be found in numerous research
reports, such as Grosh and Glewwe (1998), GSO (2004 a, b), and World Bank
(2000, 2001, and 2005).
The surveys are organized by household, but they also include somecharacteristics for individuals in the household, such as age, gender, relationship to household head, marital status, working status, salary, health, and education. This structure lets us identify the elderly people as well as the households
that include elderly people. In this paper, we consider the elderly as people whoare at least 60 years old, and the elderly households are those with at least one
elderly person. Table 1 provides information on the sample sizes for the four
surveys.
At the household level, the surveys provide extensive data on sourcesof income, business and agricultural enterprises, detailed household expenditures, ownership of consumer durables, poverty incidence, poverty alleviation
programs, wealth, and housing conditions. The households are representative of
the entire Vietnamese population, both urban and rural, and across the regions,so that we can provide an overview of the elderly population for Vietnam as awhole.
The data has some limitations. Firstly, we generally only have information about relatives who live in the same household (particularly in the later
surveys), and therefore it is difficult to identify other relatives who may be living nearby or migrating to other areas. These relatives are extremely important

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when we consider their support from/to the elderly people. Thus, for instance,
while we know about receipt of remittances, we cannot say what percentage of
non-coresident children provide them. Secondly, besides wages, most income
sources are only identified at the household level, so it is not clear which member is the source of the income. Wealth data is also only available at the household level. This limits the analysis of intra-household sharing. Thirdly, somesurvey questions change over time. This includes questions in which the answer
categories change. Also, some interesting questions only appear in the earlier
surveys (e.g., a list of children living outside the household, a detailed list ofremittances sent and received by the household, and individualized information
about health status), while other interesting questions are not added until thelater surveys (mainly, detailed information about a variety of income sources
for the household). This inconsistent structure again limits our comparative
study between years.
We will analyze our research objectives by using simple tabulationsof data for each survey to observe trends over time. Since data are representative for the entire Vietnamese population, we can observe changes in living
arrangements and other characteristics of the Vietnamese elderly during the past
decade as they experienced profound social and economic changes.

4. Results and Analysis
The elderly population will be analyzed along different aspects, suchas gender, age, areas, and regions. We consider general characteristics of the
population, living arrangements, working status, housing conditions, and poverty situation.

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4.1. General characteristics of the population
Table 2 provides general information about the Vietnamese population with regard to the elderly and nonelderly. First, we can observe aging of
the population in Vietnam, as the percent of the population in the older age
brackets grew over time. For instance, the percentage of the population aged 80
and older grew from 0.73 percent in 1992/93 to 1.5 percent in 2004.
We also find that the elderly population accounted for 9.9 percent of
the whole population in 2004, and this figure was slightly higher than the projections of the United Nations (2004), at only 7.5 percent. Along with the aging
process, we also could see an increasing percentage in the elderly population of
females (from 56.81 percent in 1992/93 to 58.42 percent in 2004) and of widows (from 33.9 percent in 1992/93 to 36.99 percent in 2004).

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The data also show that the majority of the elderly lived in rural areas(over 70 percent), but this percentage decreased over time on account of
increasing urbanization. In addition, the data show that almost half of the elderly population was living in the Red River Delta and the Mekong River Delta,
where agriculture-based activities are still popular. By marital status, most of
the elderly people were married or widowed (over 97 percent). Figure 1 showsthat the elderly women were less likely to be married than elderly men. As
explained in Knodel and Truong (2002), the situation could be attributable toseveral factors, including differences in life expectancy between males andfemales. Widowhood is common among rural residents and women.

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As indicated in Table 3, educational background of the elderly people, which is measured by reading and writing ability, varied with gender, marital status, area, and region.
By gender, the estimated results show that the elderly women had aclear disadvantage in comparison with their male peers, although the gap between
males and females was getting smaller. Moreover, urban residents and younger
elderly had stronger educational backgrounds than did their rural and older counterparts. By marital status, the data indicate that the widowed elderly tended tohave lower educational backgrounds than the married and nonmarried elderly,
and the married elderly had the highest rate of reading and writing ability. One
critical detail can be seen if we look at educational gap between regions. The elderly in poor regions such as the North West and the Central Highlands, which are
isolated and remote areas, had the lowest rates of reading and writing ability, andthis situation might in turn prevent them from accessing social services.

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4.2. Family structure of elderly households
Table 4 provides information about household living arrangements inthe surveys. About 70 percent of the population lived in nonelderly households,
and the remaining 30 percent lived in elderly households. The majority of elderly lived in households where an elderly person was the household head (over 60
percent). In those households, it would be more reasonable to think of children
as more dependent on their elderly parents, than vice versa. The fact that many
households with an elderly head still had multiple children living at home supports this argument.

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A potentially worriedsome trend, meanwhile, is what appears to be ashift over time from households with dependent elderly to only elderly households. The percentage of the elderly living as dependents declined from 27.21
percent in 1992/93 to 17.72 percent in 2004, while the corresponding elderly
living in only elderly households increased from 13.43 percent to 20.67 percent
in the same period. Figure 2 shows this situation in graphical terms, illustratingthat the percentage of dependent elderly was squeezed at all ages.
Meanwhile, the percentage of elderly in the one-person elderly households grew from 3.47 percent in 1992/93 to 5.62 percent in 2004. This situation
was prevalent among female and rural residents. For instance, about 80 percentof the elderly who lived alone were female, and also 80 percent of them lived in

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rural areas. Given various social and economic disadvantages of the female elderly in comparison with their male counterparts, the situation calls for social
policy makers to give more attention to effective social welfare policies for theelderly females, such as education and income generation (United Nations
Development Programme, 2002).
Among the dependent elderly, over time the vast majority were foundliving with their married sons. There were significant differences between ruraland urban areas regarding this situation: the percentage of dependent elderly
living with a married son in rural areas remained the same, while it decreased200

The Elderly Population in Vietnam during Economic Transformation: An Overview

over time in urban areas. This difference could be explained by various reasons,
including different characteristics of working and living styles between areas.
Table 4 also shows that this trend also held, but to a much lesser
extent, in the households where an elderly person was the household head.
4.3. Working status and housework of elderly people
Table 5 shows information about the working status of the elderly.
We can see that many elderly remained active, and they were working either forsalary or for the household’s agricultural and/or other enterprises. The average
working rate was about 45 percent.
By area, rural dwellers had significantly higher working rates than did

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their urban counterparts. This situation could be explained by the fact that manyrural elderly people were engaged in agriculture-based activities. By gender, theelderly females were less economically active than their male peers. In addition,
married and non-married people were more active than widows. Higher
employment rates were also found among the elderly in households with an elderly head or with only elderly members. In dependent elderly households, lessthan 20 percent of the elderly worked. This evidence might imply that elderly
who faced the most trouble working (either health problems or disability) wereable to rely on their children for help. By age, the elderly aged from 60 to 64
maintained an over 60 percent employment rate, and this percentage gradually
decreased with increasing age. In summary, lower employment rates could befound among urban dwellers, widows, women, those over age 70, and elderly
who lived as dependents in households.
Table 6 shows the data on housework among the Vietnamese elderly.
Generally, the same trends found for working status also apply to housework,
but the extent of the differences tends to be smaller. The exception is thatwomen did much more housework than men.
4.4. Housing conditions of elderly households
The surveys contain many indicators that can be used to evaluate thehousing conditions of the elderly households. We use the following indicators:(1) housing structures, (2) sources of drinking and cooking water, (3) toilet
usage, and (4) sources of lighting. Table 7 presents data on the housing conditions of the elderly households through four surveys. We can observe that there
were improvements in all areas, most notably in the widespread adoption ofelectric lighting for homes.
Housing structures have improved over time. The percentage of temporary houses decreased from 29.25 percent in 1992/93 to 18.83 percent in
2004, while the percentage of houses with bathroom, kitchen, and toilet (BKT)
increased in the same period, particularly for the houses with shared bathroom,
kitchen, and toilet (from 1.91 percent to 10.51 percent).
Over the decade, the elderly households had more chances to accessbetter water sources for drinking and cooking, which in turn might be good fortheir health. Percentage of the elderly households using an individual tap

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increased (from 10 percent in 1992/93 to 14 percent in 2004). There were, however, still many elderly households relying on natural water sources such as
spring water, rain water, and water from rivers, lakes and ponds.
Hygiene conditions in terms of toilets were also significantly
improved over the past decade. As can be seen in Table 7, more modern toilet
types were used in the elderly households, e.g., the percentage using flush toilets with septic tanks increased from 12.88 percent in 1992/93 to 25.44 percent
in 2004, while the percentage using simple toilets decreased substantially from55.78 percent to 24.13 percent in the same period. Nevertheless, about 15 percent of elderly households did not have any toilet, which might harm theirhealth through bad hygiene conditions.
One of the most substantial improvements during the period was theincreased percentage of elderly households using electricity as the main source

203Giang Thanh Long and Wade Donald Pfauof lighting. It increased from 52.13 percent in 1992/93 to almost 94 percent in2004. The improvement resulted from the rural electrification program promoted by the government since the late 1990s. At the same time, the percentage ofthe elderly households using gas, oil, and kerosene lamps decreased significantly from 46.49 percent in 1993 to only 4.23 percent in 2004.
4.5. Poverty status of the elderly and their households
We follow the GSO to calculate per capita expenditures-based poverty
rates. The GSO method is to calculate the minimum expenditures needed to204

The Elderly Population in Vietnam during Economic Transformation: An Overview

satisfy basic nutritional and living needs. Moreover, this method provides anabsolute poverty line that stays constant in real terms over time. Table 8 shows
the GSO poverty lines over time.
Table 9 provides our estimates of poverty rates in Vietnam for different categories. Poverty rates decreased dramatically across Vietnam over the
study period (57.6 percent overall in 1992/93 to 19.3 percent overall in 2004).
Although poverty rates reduced impressively in all regions, theyremained high in the North West and the Central Highlands. The situation indicates that the government should promote poverty reduction programs more

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effectively in these regions. In addition, it is also clear that regional disparities
remained over time.
By area, we see that poverty rates reduced substantially in both urban
and rural areas. For instance, elderly poverty rates decreased from 58.1 percent
to 22.8 percent in rural areas, and from 19.6 percent to 4.3 percent in urban
areas between 1992/93 and 2004. Despite dramatic improvements, poverty consistently remained higher in rural areas.
By marital status and gender, the differences among the groups were
small, but married people and males tended to have slightly lower poverty rates
than those of their counterparts.

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With regard to living arrangements, Figure 3 shows the distribution of
per capita expenditures in comparison to the poverty thresholds. Although thefigure illustrates the impressive gains in poverty reduction, no particular pattern
for poverty rates among various living arrangements emerged.
One of the most important matters for social welfare is to address therelative poverty and vulnerability of various groups in Vietnam. By looking at
the poverty rates for different age groups, we found one of the striking results
was that poverty rates of the elderly were actually lower than those of thenonelderly. Figure 4 provides further evidence of this trend.
In Figure 4, poverty rates present a U-shaped pattern across the age
distribution with the highest rates occurring at the youngest and oldest ages, andthe lowest poverty rates occurring in the 50s and 60s. This means that, for thecurrent elderly population in Vietnam, the age of 60 might be too young to be
defined as elderly, as hardship tends to occur mostly at later ages.
Although the above information illustrates in detail the official poverty incidence of the elderly population in Vietnam, the official measure has
potential biases. As indicated in a variety of studies on measurements of elderly
poverty, such as Schwarz (2003) and Barrientos (2006), such poverty measures
are only established for the household as a whole rather than for particular individuals. Therefore, it is quite difficult to analyze the elderly’s relative poverty
and vulnerability in comparison with that of the rest of the population. In orderto get more detailed information about the poverty of elderly people, a numberof indicators, such as family composition and control of family resources, need
to be taken into account. Also, large households may bear less burden than theofficial measures suggest because of economies of scale in their expenditures
for housing and other goods, and when this is accounted for along with the factthat elderly households are generally smaller, we may see a rise in elderly
poverty relative to the rest of the population. We will further explore theseissues in subsequent research.

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5. Concluding Remarks
Like many countries in the world, the aging process of the populationin Vietnam is taking place more rapidly than official population projections,such as the one by the United Nations (2004). An aging society that is also
undergoing rapid social and economic changes produces a potential concern for
public policy. Using the Vietnam (Household) Living Standard Surveys for
1992/93 to 2004, we examined the elderly population of Vietnam with attention
to various aspects of aging to identify the potential stresses.
By investigating such indicators among the elderly as education,
household living arrangements, and housing conditions, we found that family
relations remained strong in Vietnam despite profound social and economicchanges. We found a relatively high proportion of elderly people living with
their children. In addition, the elderly were not simply dependents in the households; they contributed significantly to the households in various ways. Theirhousing conditions and standard of living have also improved over time.
Despite the general improvements, however, the detailed decomposition of data shows that many disparities remained within the elderly population.
Disadvantages remained for women, for those in rural areas, and especially inparticular regions of the country. Given the current social security system withlow coverage of the population, the elderly people might face a variety of socialand economic risks as societal circumstances continue to change.
In the next step of research on the elderly population in Vietnam, we
will explore in more detail income and poverty issues, in order to pursue ourkeen interest in Vietnamese pension reform issues. We will consider how a
non-contributory pension scheme might operate and benefit the Vietnameseelderly.

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