The economic development in Vietnam can be traced to the policy reforms of the DoiMoi (economic renovation)
that brought profound improvements in the social and economic aspects of the country. Yet, the country is still
considered as developing in terms of its agriculture-based economy. This paper aims to explore the change of
income inequality dimensions in the recent years, and the current situation of regional economic disparities using
both development policy review and econometrics approaches. The data from Vietnam Household Living Standard
Surveys (VHLSSs) 2004 and 2008 were used in the study. The expenditure per capita was employed as the
dependent variable to regress with household characteristics and resources. In addition, the regional dummy
variables were employed to show the different effects from different geographic locations. The results showed that
the structure of rural economy in the year 2008 has changed compared with that of the year 2004. The trend of the
change of income inequality dimensions was to be more industrialized and market-oriented. However, agriculture
still plays an important role for the rural economy. The results also implied that the infrastructure facilities made a
significant contribution to economic development in the rural areas such as roads, markets and electricity. In
addition, education is positively significant to household income. Therefore, investment to human resource is a
good option for economic development. Geographically, the North Central Coast region still shows to be the less
developed region of the country. Interestingly, this finding does not absolutely follow the hypothesis that the poor
and less developed regions are associated with the ethnic and the uplands. The study recommends that the
economic development strategies and polices should be adjusted to decrease the gap among regions based on their
economic advantages in order to further development and to balance the economic situation between regions in the
future.