Vietnam’s extensive social security system is claimed to have played a key role in the extraordinary poverty decline over the past decades. This claim is, however, not substantiated by empirical evidence. In this study, we investigate how well contributory pensions and social allowances...

While the provision of subsidized loans through the VBSP forms a cornerstone of Vietnam’s antipoverty policy, little is known on the impact of these preferential loans. In this paper, we use fixed effect regression to estimate the average effect of the program on income and expenditures of...

The informal credit market remains an important source of finance for the poor in Vietnam. Yet, little if anything is known about the ultimate impact of informal loans on poverty and inequality. If informal credit is an important means to decrease poverty, the government may want to reconsider...