A note on poverty among ethnic minorities in the Northwest region of Vietnam

摘要

This article is the first to investigate both community and household determinants of poverty among ethnic minorities in the Northwest region of Vietnam. Results of a fractional logit and a logit model show that fixed assets, education and off-farm employment, among other household factors, have a strongly reducing effect on both the intensity and incidence of poverty. Furthermore, some commune characteristics were found to be closely linked to poverty. Notably, the presence of means of transport and post offices significantly reduces both poverty intensity and incidence. However, other commune and household factors affect only poverty incidence or intensity but not both. Hence, a typical approach using a logit/probit model that only examined the determinants of poverty incidence did not adequately evaluate or even ignored important impacts of some factors on poverty intensity. We draw both socio-economic household and commune level implications for poverty alleviation in the study area.