Private inter-household transfers in Vietnam in the early and late 1990s

Type Report
Title Private inter-household transfers in Vietnam in the early and late 1990s
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2002
URL http://ideas.repec.org/p/boc/bocoec/524.html
Abstract
This chapter uses data from the 1992/93 and 1997/98 Vietnam Living Standards Surveys(VLSS) to describe patterns of money transfers between households. Rapid economic growth during the 1990’s did little to diminish the importance of private transfers in Vietnam. Private transfers are large and widespread in both surveys, and they are muchlarger than public transfers are. Private transfers appear to function like means-tested public transfers, flowing from better off to worse off households and providing old-agesupport in retirement. Panel evidence suggests some hysteresis in private transfer patterns,but many households also changed from recipients to givers and vice versa between surveys. Changes in private transfers appear responsive to changes in household pre-transfer income, demographic changes and life-course events. Transfer inflows rise upon retirement and widowhood, for example, and are positively associated with increases inhealth expenditures. It also appears that private transfer inflows increased for households affected by Typhoon Linda, which devastated Vietnam’s southernmost provinces in late 2007.

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