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Inequality in Vietnamese Urban-Rural Living Standards, 1993-2006

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  • Booth, Alison L.
  • Le, Huong Thu

Abstract

Using data from five waves of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey, we find evidence of significant urban-rural expenditure inequality. Urban-rural inequality increased dramatically from 1993 to 1998, and peaked in 2002 before reducing slightly in 2004, and significantly in 2006. The urban-rural gap also monotonically increases across the expenditure distribution. We use a variant of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, applied to the unconditional quantile regression method of Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (2009), to explain the components of the per capita expenditure differentials between urban and rural households at selected quantiles of the distribution. We also compare these estimates with those at mean obtained by OLS. Our results show a number of factors contributing significantly to the high urban-rural gap. These include inter-group differences in education, household demographic structure, industrial structure and their related returns. Adjusting the average characteristics of rural households to those of urban households will reduce about a half of the overall urban-rural expenditure gap. A significant part of the remaining unexplained component lies in the intercept differences; that is, the inter-group differences in other factors not captured in the model that favor urban households.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 7918.

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Date of creation: Jul 2010
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7918

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Keywords: Oaxaca decomposition; unconditional quantile regression; urban-rural inequality; Vietnam;

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References

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  1. Dennis Tao Yang, 1999. "Urban-Biased Policies and Rising Income Inequality in China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 306-310, May.
  2. Yun, Myeong-Su, 2003. "A Simple Solution to the Identification Problem in Detailed Wage Decompositions," IZA Discussion Papers 836, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  3. Bob Baulch & Truong Thi Kim Chuyen & Dominique Haughton & Jonathan Haughton, 2007. "Ethnic minority development in Vietnam," The Journal of Development Studies, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 43(7), pages 1151-1176.
  4. Dinardo, J. & Fortin, N.M. & Lemieux, T., 1994. "Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach," Cahiers de recherche 9406, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
  5. Koenker, Roger W & Bassett, Gilbert, Jr, 1978. "Regression Quantiles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 33-50, January.
  6. Binh Nguyen & James Albrecht & Susan Vroman & Daniel Westbrook, 2003. "A Quantile Regression Decomposition of Urban-Rural Inequality in Vietnam," Working Papers gueconwpa~03-03-31, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
  7. Elder, Todd E. & Goddeeris, John H. & Haider, Steven J., 2010. "Unexplained gaps and Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 284-290, January.
  8. Gunewardena, Dileni & Van de Walle, Dominique, 2000. "Sources of ethnic inequality in Vietnam," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2297, The World Bank.
  9. Ben Jann, 2008. "The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 8(4), pages 453-479, December.
  10. Sergio Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2007. "Unconditional Quantile Regressions," NBER Technical Working Papers 0339, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Nicole M. Fortin, 2008. "The Gender Wage Gap among Young Adults in the United States: The Importance of Money versus People," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(4).
  12. José Mata & José A. F. Machado, 2005. "Counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(4), pages 445-465.
  13. Biewen, Martin, 2002. "Bootstrap inference for inequality, mobility and poverty measurement," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 317-342, June.
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