This study combines insights of the New Economics of Labour Migration with the asset-based
approach to welfare dynamics using panel household data from Vietnam. This method allows us to determine
whether poverty transitions induced by remittances are actually structural, that is, based on asset growth and
therefore long term, or stochastic, that is, based only on short-term increases in income, which implies a risk of
falling back into poverty. To control for endogeneity of remittances, we use household fixed effects and instrumental
variables estimation. The paper shows that remittances have a positive impact on asset growth and that
the impact differs with welfare status and ethnicity