Do returns to schools go up during transition? The not so contrary case of Vietnam

A key stylized fact about transition economies is that the returns to schooling rise as economic reform progresses. Existing research suggests that Vietnam is an exception to this pattern, with a decrease in males’ return from 1992 to 1998, and little increase in the return to females’ education (Liu, 2006). This exception may be because of the gradual economic reform applied in Vietnam, whilst in Eastern European countries the “Big Bang” transformation was conducted. Therefore to see whether Vietnam is still a counter example, we re-examine the trend in the rate of return to schooling in Vietnam over the 1998-2004 period, where the reforms have had a longer time to have an effect

Impacts of Household Credit on the Poor in Peri-urban Areas of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Access to credit is universally believed to be an effective tool to help the poor out of poverty. Yet the evidence for this has not considered all settings, especially the peri-urban areas of rapidly industrialising Asian countries. In these areas human capital is the main asset of the poor, so it is important to understand the input of credit on human capital. Therefore, this thesis begins with Chapter 2 showing the importance of human capital in income generation in Vietnam during the economic transition. The thesis then examines factors affecting credit participation and credit constraints for the poor in the peri-urban areas, and investigates whether credit participation impacts the poor’s education and healthcare spending and benefits their children’s schooling. Chapter 2 employs five large datasets of Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys (VHLSS) conducted in 1998, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008 by Vietnam General Statistics Office (GSO) to examine the rate of return to schooling in Vietnam over the period of 1998-2008. The chapter finds that the rate of return has increased quickly during the recent economic reform and reached around 9-10 percent. The chapter clearly indicates an increasing importance of education in earnings during the later part of the economic transition in Vietnam. Therefore, human capital investment, including healthcare and education, is needed to help the poor escape poverty since they rely heavily upon labour income, especially in urban and peri-urban areas. One of the typical solutions to improve the poor’s human capital is to provide access to credit resources, however, there are many barriers blocking the poor’s access to credit. Chapter 4 uses a novel dataset collected by the author from peri-urban areas of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 2008 to examine how the poor use their loans, and factors affecting their credit participation and credit constraints. The chapter finds the presence of many commercial banks in the areas does not help the poor, who rely heavily on informal credit. Loans in the peri-urban areas are mainly used for non-productive purposes, which stresses the importance of consumption smoothing motives. Further, households in more rural wards have a higher probability of borrowing than more urban households, thanks to better community relationships and interpersonal trust. Competition by borrowing neighbours adversely affects the opportunity for borrowing in urban wards where the poor households’ borrowings rely more on subsidized credit funds. A closer look at specified microcredit sources reveals that household behaviours differ in each market segment. Furthermore, the poor are highly credit-constrained. Wealthier households, in terms of asset holdings and phone possession, appear less credit-constrained. However, except in the most rural part of the study area, the likelihood of credit constraints increases with distance to the nearest banks, which suggests that supply-side intervention could help in overcoming credit constraints. Overall, the poor in urban wards are more credit-constrained because of exclusion by commercial banks and weak interpersonal trust. Given that a sizeable fraction of the poor have participated in credit activities, there is a debate about whether microcredit has positive impacts on education and health for borrowing households. To provide evidence for this debate, Chapter 5 mainly uses the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method to examine the impact of household credit on education and healthcare spending by the poor in the peri-urban areas. In addition to matching statistically identical non-borrowers with borrowers, my estimates also control for household pre-treatment income and assets, which may be associated with unobservable factors affecting both credit participation and the outcomes of interest. The PSM estimates show significant and positive impacts of borrowing on education and healthcare spending. However, multiple ordered treatment effect estimates reveal that only formal credit has significant and positive impacts, while informal credit does not have significant impacts. Whether the effects of credit are homogenous across distributions of outcome variables is another question of interest. This question asks whether the impact is the same along the outcome distribution, such as for households with already high consumption versus those with low consumption, or already high healthcare spending versus the low spenders. Chapter 6 employs a Quantile Treatment Effect estimator (QTE) and finds heterogeneity in the impacts on household budget shares for education and healthcare. Finally, household credit for the poor was examined and found to have a positive influence on current expenditure on education. However, to test whether the credit to the poor has longer term effects on education, in Chapter 7 there are results for estimating the impact of the credit on child schooling. Probit, Negative Binomial (NB) and PSM estimates roughly indicate no strong evidence of an effect, especially of informal credit, although formal credit may have a positive impact on child schooling

Heterogeneous credit impacts of healthcare spending of the poor in peri-urban areas, Vietnam: Quantile treatment effects estimation

Quantile Treatment Effects are estimated to study the impacts of household credit access on health spending by poor households in one District of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. There are significant positive effects of credit on the health budget shares of households with low healthcare spending. In contrast, when an Average Treatment Effect is estimated there is no discernible impact of credit access on health spending. Hence, typical approaches to studying heterogeneous credit impacts that only consider between group differences and not differences over the distribution of outcomes may miss some heterogeneity of interest to policymakers

Impacts of household credit on education and healthcare spending by the poor in peri-urban areas in Vietnam

There is debate about whether microfinance has positive impacts on education and health for borrowing households in developing countries. To provide evidence for this debate we use a new survey designed to meet the conditions for propensity score matching (PSM) and examine the impact of household credit on education and healthcare spending by the poor in peri-urban areas of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In addition to matching statistically identical non-borrowers with borrowers, our estimates also control for household pre-treatment income and assets, which may be associated with unobservable factors affecting both credit participation and the outcomes of interest. The PSM estimates of binary treatment effect show significant and positive impacts of borrowing on education and healthcare spending. However, multiple ordered treatment effect estimates reveal that only formal credit has significant and positive impacts on education and healthcare spending, while informal credit has insignificant impacts on the spending

Household credit to the poor and its impact on child schooling in peri-urban areas, Vietnam

This paper uses a novelty dataset of poor households in peri-urban areas in Vietnam to estimate impacts of small loans on child schooling. The Probit and Negative Binomial model estimates roughly indicate no strong evidence of the effect, especially of informal credit. Formal credit is likely to have positive impacts on child schooling, but its effect is not strong enough to be conclusive. The paper suggests that to obtain the target of sustainable poverty reduction, easing access to formal credit sources as well as exempting tuition and other school fees are necessary to keep poor children at schools longer

Firm exporting and employee benefits: first evidence from Vietnam manufacturing SMEs

This study examines linkages between the export participation of firms and employee benefits in terms of wages and employment quality. Based on a uniquely matched firmworker panel dataset for 2007 and 2009, we find evidence that export participation by firms in Vietnam has a positive impact on wages when taking into account firm characteristics alone. However, the exporter wage premium falls when both firm and worker characteristics are controlled for, and it decreases further when controlling for time-invariant unobservable factors by spell fixed effect estimation. While there are many studies on the export wage premium, the role of export participation on the quality of employment remains largely unexplored. By using a firm-level balanced panel dataset for the same period, our results suggest that export participation has a negative effect on employment quality. Nevertheless, the impact of export participation on both wages and employment quality vary greatly with respect to levels of technology

Heterogeneous Credit Impacts on Health Care Spending of the Poor in Peri-Urban Areas, Vietnam: Quantile Treatment Effect Estimation

Quantile treatment effects are estimated to study the impacts of household credit access on health spending by poor households in one District of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. There are significant positive effects of credit on the health budget shares of households with low health care spending. In contrast, when an average treatment effect is estimated, there is no discernible impact of credit access on health spending. Hence, typical approaches to studying heterogeneous credit impacts that only consider between-group differences and not differences over the distribution of outcomes may miss some heterogeneity of interest to policymakers

Religiosity and life satisfaction among old people: Evidence from a transitional country

Using data from the 2011 Vietnam National Aging Survey, we examined whether religion is associated with subjective well-being (i.e. happiness or life satisfaction) among old people in Vietnam. Our regression analysis provided the first evidence that some religious affiliations are negatively related to happiness. Buddhists and Caodaists are less happy than their non-religious counterparts, even after controlling for several household and individual attributes. However, this negative association does not hold for Christians. This finding is robust to the choice of key covariates and specification of econometric models. Our finding supports the hypothesis that religiosity tends to be linked with unhappiness in transitional countries because in these countries those who are religious often consist disproportionately of new, relatively unhappy recruits

Religiosity and life satisfaction among old people: Evidence from a transitional country

Using data from the 2011 Vietnam National Aging Survey, we examined whether religion is associated with subjective well-being (i.e. happiness or life satisfaction) among old people in Vietnam. Our regression analysis provided the first evidence that some religious affiliations are negatively related to happiness. Buddhists and Caodaists are less happy than their non-religious counterparts, even after controlling for several household and individual attributes. However, this negative association does not hold for Christians. This finding is robust to the choice of key covariates and specification of econometric models. Our finding supports the hypothesis that religiosity tends to be linked with unhappiness in transitional countries because in these countries those who are religious often consist disproportionately of new, relatively unhappy recruits

Corruption, provincial institutions and manufacturing firm productivity: New evidence from a transitional economy

Using data from nationwide surveys of provincial institutions and private manufacturing small medium enterprises, this study provided the first evidence of the impact of provincial institution quality and firms’ participation in and intensity of corrupt activities on firm productivity in Vietnam. We found that the bribe intensity instead of whether firms bribed state officials or not (measured by a dummy variable) has a negative effect on firm productivity when the endogeneity of corruption and unobservable characteristics are controlled for. This finding contrasts to a popular belief about a paradox for East Asian countries where corruption is positively associated with firm growth