Migration in Vietnam: New Evidence from Recent Surveys

Abstract

We investigate determinants of individual migration decisions in Vietnam, a country with increasingly high levels of geographical labor mobility. Using data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) of 2012, we find that probability of migration is strongly associated with individual, household and community-level characteristics. The probability of migration is higher for young people and those with post-secondary education. Migrants are more likely to be from households with better-educated household heads, female-headed households, and households with higher youth dependency ratios. Members of ethnic minority groups are much less likely to migrate, other things equal. Using multinomial logit methods, we distinguish migration by broad destination, and find that those moving to Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi have broadly similar characteristics and drivers of migration to those moving to other destinations. We also use VHLSS 2012 together with VHLSS 2010, which allows us to focus on a narrow cohort of recent migrantsthose present in the household in 2010, but who have moved away by 2012. This yields much tighter results. For education below upper secondary school, the evidence on positive selection by education is much stronger. However, the ethnic minority "penalty" on spatial labor mobility remains strong and significant, even after controlling for specific characteristics of households and communes. This lack of mobility is a leading candidate to explain the distinctive persistence of poverty among Vietnam's ethnic minority populations, even as national poverty has sharply diminished.

Migration and Rural Differentiation: Evidence from a Vietnamese Village

“…Regarding the education levels, the average migrant in the sample had 9.6 years of schooling, while non-migrants have an average of 7.4 years of schooling. These results are similar to early studies of migrants in Vietnam from macro level studies (Coxhead, Nguyen, & Linh, 2015;Dang, 2006) which shows that migrants comparatively well educated. The next generation of migrants (usually young individuals) have higher years of education than the earlier ones, which can easily be from understanding of the general national development that occurred in education.…”

Persistent Malnutrition in Ethnic Minority Communities of Vietnam: Issues and Options for Policy and Interventions

“…The reason for this lack of mobility is not clear. It may be related to supply-side variables (such as kinship ties, commitment to culture and ancestry, or lack of education) or demand-side variables (such as lack of skills employers need or discrimination against ethnic groups) (see Coxhead, Cuong, and Vu 2015). The end result is the same: ethnic groups are less likely to leave their villages, which may be an important reason why poverty persists in these communities unlike in the rest of the country (Coxhead, Cuong, and Vu 2015).…”

Crop prices and migration in Vietnam

“…Phan and Coxhead (2010) analyse the relationship between inequality and migration in Viet Nam: they provide evidence of labour immobility caused by poverty, which may lead to persistent poverty in certain provinces. Using the Viet Nam Household Living Standard Surveys, Coxhead et al (2016) present evidence that migrants are more likely to be male, young, and from the ethnic majority. The authors also show the existence of a positive selection among migrants: individuals with higher education are more likely to move.…”