The entire management process of VHLSS in 2002-2008 has been reviewed.
Recommendations for anew management process for VHLSS in 2010-2020 have been made
using the Total Quality Management approach. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first
comprehensive review of the VHLSS written for academic publication. The lessons derived
from this review are likely to be useful to researchers and practitioners involved in living
standards programs inside and outside of Viet Nam.
Four multilevel models are built, each with four levels: household, commune, district and
province.
The first model uses data from the VHLSS 2002 and the Population and Housing Census
1999 to give small area estimates of living standards means for communes in Viet Nam,
taking into account fixed and random effects at these four levels.
The second model is a small area estimation (SAE) model for rural communes using
household and community level variables from the VHLSS 2002 and the Viet Nam Rural
Agricultural Census 2001.
The third model - a multiple membership multilevel model - aims to identify the effects on
household living standards of not only the district a household belongs to, but neighbouring
districts.
The fourth model - a cross-classified multilevel model - includes data from the VHLSS of
2002, 2004 and 2006 tostudy living standards at several points in time.
The last two models are applied to the study of living standards in Viet Nam for the first
time. Altogether the four models allow us to analyse VHLSS data both spatially and
temporally.
This thesis constitutes the first implementation of a SAE process based on multilevel models
in Viet Nam with more than two levels.