The Vietnam Living Standard Surveys (VLSS) are supposed to be representative of the entire population in Vietnam. However, we uncover an anomaly that the amount of remittances received from domestic sources is significantly larger than the amount of remittances sent to domestic sources, implying...

Remittances can potentially help to promote economic development by providing a mechanism to share risks, reduce poverty, and improve equality. However, the overall impacts of remittances are uncertain from the view of economic theory as different mechanisms lead to opposite impacts. Since the...

During a time of rapid economic transformation in Vietnam, we examine two possibilities for elderly support: living together with children and receiving remittances. Our analysis uses four household surveys conducted in Vietnam between 1992 and 2004. With the highly detailed 1997/98 survey, we...

By using the Vietnam Living Standard Surveys in 1992/93 and 1997/98, and the Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys in 2002 and 2004, this paper describes the patterns of living arrangements for the elderly in Vietnam and examines the determinants of such arrangements during the past decade....

Briefly, some of our findings are as follows. First, the impacts of a universal NCP scheme on poverty rates and the poverty gap of the older persons would be significant, but become less potent when the eligibility age is higher. In particular, with the benefits provided, the older persons who...

Our findings include that overseas remittances come from throughout the world, but are dominated by the United States as a main source. Also, over time, the destinations of foreign remittances are becoming more diverse as they move away from Ho Chi Minh city and other urban areas, in particular,...

Many studies have suggested that, under the context of high economic growth and strong flows of laborers from rural to urban areas, living arrangements of the elderly people, particularly elderly women, and familial relations will be more vulnerable to a variety of social and economic risks....

Since the 1990s, Vietnam has experienced a dramatic growth in remittance flows. This paper uses the Vietnam Living Standard Surveys for 1992/93 and 1997/98 to study the role of gender in these remittance flows, both from the perspective of receiving and sending remittances. Knowing about gender...

This paper aims to provide a long-term financial vision for the Vietnamese pension scheme using stochastic modeling for key variables under an actuarial framework. In particular, we project the pension fund balances in order to see whether the scheme will be financially sustainable. The median...

By using household data in 2004, this paper identifies the determinants of the elderly poverty in Vietnam. We find that urban and rural elderly are substantially different, and thus they should be analyzed separately. The results for urban areas generally show that higher ages, unmarried status,...