Essays on housing affordability and housing quality dilemmas in Vietnam
Creators: name: NGUYEN, Phuong
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 330403
subject: Housing markets, development and management
classificationCode: 380108
subject: Health economics
classificationCode: 380118
subject: Urban and regional economics
classificationCode: 380204
subject: Panel data analysis

description: The housing affordability problem is a profound and increasing challenge facing policy-makers in the developing world, where poor households are the most vulnerable to problems arising from a shortage of affordable and adequate housing. In Vietnam, the housing market has undergone fundamental changes driven by widening income inequality, increasing urbanisation and decreasing household size. The housing price-to-income ratio, a measure of housing affordability, is currently at an unprecedentedly high level. Vietnam's experience is impacted by a number of elements such as rapidly rising costs of housing, unequal income distribution, speculative activities, constraints in land supply and housing finance, housing market structure, and the regulatory environment.
 
Over three studies, this thesis carries out the econometric analysis of secondary data to explore mechanisms underlying housing affordability in Vietnam and its flow-on effects on household well-being. Noticing that the distribution of income plays a crucial role in explaining the housing affordability problem, the first study analyses the influence of income inequality on a number of housing outcomes, including housing price-to-income ratio, housing values, and household choices of housing type and housing conditions in Vietnam's urban areas. It does so by employing data from the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey as well as district-level data from the Statistical Yearbook of Vietnam from 2010 to 2016. The estimated results demonstrate that rising income inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient at the district level, is associated with rising housing cost burden and a substitution effect towards consuming poor-quality housing resulting from a lack of housing affordability. The findings of this study provide deep insights into the long-lasting existence of informal and self-built housing in Vietnam, which is predominantly in sub-standard forms and frequently lack essential amenities.
 
Next, the second study measures the effects of poor housing conditions on occupants' physical and mental health. This study employs the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) data from 2008 to 2016. Empirical findings from this chapter indicate that living in deprived housing conditions is associated with a higher number of sick days within a year, worsening mental well-being and a more inferior self-reported health status of the occupants. The estimated results also show that the intensity of deprived housing conditions, measured by an increase in the number of housing problems, tends to worsen all health outcomes considered. These results provide a better understanding of the role of a dwelling's structural and sanitary conditions on individuals' health and have important implications for public policies.
The third study examines the role of housing conditions in enhancing households' resilience to natural disasters. This study separately looks at three of the most frequently occurring natural disasters in Vietnam, which include floods, droughts, and typhoons. This study also uses data from the VARHS. The findings from this chapter make a significant contribution to the literature on natural disasters by analysing the link between the physical attributes of housing and the probability of achieving full recovery post a disaster. In particular, the empirical findings suggest that those living in substandard houses are not only more vulnerable to disasters but take longer to recover.