IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/glodps/826.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What Explains Vietnam's Exceptional Performance in Education Relative to Other Countries? Analysis of the 2012 and 2015 PISA Data

Author

Listed:
  • Dang, Hai-Anh
  • Glewwe, Paul
  • Vu, Khoa
  • Lee, Jongwook

Abstract

Despite being the poorest or second poorest participant, Vietnam performed much better than all other developing countries, and even ahead of wealthier countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., on the 2012 and 2015 PISA assessments. We provide a rigorous investigation of Vietnam's strong performance. After making various parametric and non-parametric corrections for potentially non-representative PISA samples, including bias due to Vietnam's large out-of-school population, Vietnam still remains a large positive outlier conditional on its income. Possible higher motivation of, and coaching given to, Vietnamese students only partly explains Vietnam's performance, and this is also the case for various observed household- and school-level variables. Finally, Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions indicate that the gap in average test scores between Vietnam and the other participating countries is due not to differences in students' and schools' observed characteristics, but instead to Vietnam's greater "productivity" of those characteristics.

Suggested Citation

  • Dang, Hai-Anh & Glewwe, Paul & Vu, Khoa & Lee, Jongwook, 2021. "What Explains Vietnam's Exceptional Performance in Education Relative to Other Countries? Analysis of the 2012 and 2015 PISA Data," GLO Discussion Paper Series 826, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:826
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/233478/1/GLO-DP-0826.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abhijeet Singh, 2020. "Learning More with Every Year: School Year Productivity and International Learning Divergence," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(4), pages 1770-1813.
    2. Uri Gneezy & John A. List & Jeffrey A. Livingston & Xiangdong Qin & Sally Sadoff & Yang Xu, 2019. "Measuring Success in Education: The Role of Effort on the Test Itself," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 1(3), pages 291-308, December.
    3. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    4. Alan S. Blinder, 1973. "Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 8(4), pages 436-455.
    5. Asadullah, M. Niaz & Perera, Liyanage Devangi H. & Xiao, Saizi, 2020. "Vietnam’s extraordinary performance in the PISA assessment: A cultural explanation of an education paradox," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 42(5), pages 913-932.
    6. Das, Jishnu & Zajonc, Tristan, 2010. "India shining and Bharat drowning: Comparing two Indian states to the worldwide distribution in mathematics achievement," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 175-187, July.
    7. Pelin Akyol & Kala Krishna & Jinwen Wang, 2021. "Taking PISA Seriously: How Accurate are Low-Stakes Exams?," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 184-243, June.
    8. Roland G. Fryer & Steven D. Levitt, 2004. "Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(2), pages 447-464, May.
    9. Brian A. Jacob & Steven D. Levitt, 2003. "Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 118(3), pages 843-877.
    10. Ben Jann, 2008. "The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 8(4), pages 453-479, December.
    11. World Bank, 2013. "World Development Report 2014 [Informe sobre el desarrollo mundial 2014, Riesgo y oportunidad : la administración del riesgo como instrumento de desarrollo - Panorama general]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 16092, December.
    12. Brian Jacob & Jesse Rothstein, 2016. "The Measurement of Student Ability in Modern Assessment Systems," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 85-108, Summer.
    13. Hai-Anh H. Dang & Paul W. Glewwe, 2018. "Well Begun, but Aiming Higher: A Review of Vietnam’s Education Trends in the past 20 Years and Emerging Challenges," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(7), pages 1171-1195, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Abanokova, Kseniya, 2022. "Do Gender, Child, and Parent Characteristics Contribute to Intergenerational Subjective Well-being Mobility? Evidence from Russia during 1994-2019," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1088, Global Labor Organization (GLO).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hai-Anh Dang & Paul Glewwe & Khoa Vu & Jongwook Lee, 2021. "What Explains Vietnam’s Exceptional Performance in Education Relative to Other Countries? Analysis of the 2012 and 2015 PISA Data," Working Papers 580, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    2. Huong Thu Le & Ha Trong Nguyen, 2018. "The evolution of the gender test score gap through seventh grade: new insights from Australia using unconditional quantile regression and decomposition," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-42, December.
    3. Nguyen, Ha, 2015. "The evolution of the gender test score gap through seventh grade: New insights from Australia using quantile regression and decomposition," MPRA Paper 67586, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Słoczyński, Tymon, 2012. "New Evidence on Linear Regression and Treatment Effect Heterogeneity," MPRA Paper 39524, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Tymon Słoczyński, 2015. "The Oaxaca–Blinder Unexplained Component as a Treatment Effects Estimator," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 77(4), pages 588-604, August.
    6. Sloczynski, Tymon, 2013. "Population Average Gender Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 7315, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    8. Domenico Depalo & Raffaela Giordano & Evangelia Papapetrou, 2015. "Public–private wage differentials in euro-area countries: evidence from quantile decomposition analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 985-1015, November.
    9. Waitkus, Nora & Minkus, Lara, 2021. "Investigating the gender wealth gap across occupational classes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108206, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Arceo-Gómez, Eva O. & Campos-Vázquez, Raymundo M., 2014. "Evolución de la brecha salarial de género en México," El Trimestre Económico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, vol. 0(323), pages .619-653, julio-sep.
    11. David M Bishai & Robert Cohen & Y Natalia Alfonso & Taghreed Adam & Shyama Kuruvilla & Julian Schweitzer, 2016. "Factors Contributing to Maternal and Child Mortality Reductions in 146 Low- and Middle-Income Countries between 1990 and 2010," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(1), pages 1-13, January.
    12. Gabriella Berloffa & Francesca Paolini, 2019. "Decomposing Immigrant Differences in Physical and Mental Health: A 'Beyond the Mean' Analysis," DEM Working Papers 2019/4, Department of Economics and Management.
    13. Koomen, Miriam & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2022. "Occupational tasks and wage inequality in West Germany: A decomposition analysis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    14. Ashwini Deshpande & Smriti Sharma, 2016. "Disadvantage and discrimination in self-employment: caste gaps in earnings in Indian small businesses," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 325-346, February.
    15. Florent Dubois & Christophe Muller, 2017. "Decomposing Well-being Measures in South Africa: The Contribution of Residential Segregation to Income Distribution," AMSE Working Papers 1719, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    16. Nii-Aponsah, Hubert, 2022. "Automation exposure and implications in advanced and developing countries across gender, age, and skills," MERIT Working Papers 2022-021, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    17. Kilic, Talip & Palacios-López, Amparo & Goldstein, Markus, 2015. "Caught in a Productivity Trap: A Distributional Perspective on Gender Differences in Malawian Agriculture," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 416-463.
    18. Daniela Piazzalunga & Maria Laura Di Tommaso, 2019. "The increase of the gender wage gap in Italy during the 2008-2012 economic crisis," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(2), pages 171-193, June.
    19. Vanya Slavchevska, 2015. "Gender differences in agricultural productivity: the case of Tanzania," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 46(3), pages 335-355, May.
    20. Nathan Blascak & Anna Tranfaglia, 2021. "Decomposing Gender Differences in Bankcard Credit Limits," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-072, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    education; student learning; test scores; enrollment; PISA; Vietnam;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H0 - Public Economics - - General
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • P3 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:826. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/glabode.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.