Assessing the Impact of Poverty Reduction Programs in Vietnam

This paper aims to examine the poverty targeting and impacts of three poverty reeducation programs including programs ‘exemption of educational fees’, ‘provision with health care insurance’, and ‘micro-credit for the poor’ in Vietnam. It is found that the three programs have reached the poor quite well as compared to the international standard. The poor account for around 70 percent of participants in these programs. However the coverage of the programs over the poor is rather low, from 5 percent for the credit program to 11 percent for the health insurance program. There is no impact of the programs found on expenditure per capita, since it might take a long time for the programs to have large effects on income and expenditure. On average, households who were provided with preferential credit are more likely to have a pig, cow, buffalo, horse than other households.