The Effects of Trade Liberalization on Stunting of Children in Rural Vietnam

This paper empirically looks into the effects of trade liberalization on stunting of children in rural Vietnam in the 1990s. Specifically, we empirically investigate the extent to which the increase in rice price that accompanied Vietnam’s trade liberalization in the 1990s affects the height for age z-score of children between 12 and 60 months. First, we find that higher rice price had a significant positive impact on height for age z-score of children aged between 12 and 60 months. Such positive effect of rice price on the height for age z-scores of children aged between 12 and 60 months is found to result from the fact that the increase in rice price allowed rice producers to spend more on food and especially on non-rice food, which helped alleviating children stunting. Second, we also find that higher rice price led to an increase in the height for age z-scores of female children but had no effect on the height for age z-scores for male children. This finding suggests that rice-producing households with higher income could spend more resources on the diet of female children who traditionally received a much less equal treatment than male children in Vietnam even in their early age.