In a classic piece, Terry Rambo (1973) clearly demonstrated the relevance of
taking a regional approach to the study of Vietnam. His comparative study of a village of
the North and one of the South has set up a model for Vietnamese studies since the early
1970s. Recently, a number of studies on the Vietnamese society have adopted a similar
comparative perspective and shown different patterns of behavior between provinces and
regions. Works on sociodemographic behaviors such as marriage (Goodkind, 1996), and
fertility (Allman et al., 1991; Nguyen et al., 1996; Barbieri et al., 1996) have also
uncovered contrasting patterns, particularly between the northern and the southern
regions. In this paper, we explore regional variations in household composition by
focusing on the living arrangements of young couples. The question is whether part of the
regional differences observed in household structure can be explained by different
patterns of coresidence between parents and married children.