Decomposing the Ethnic Gap in Living Standards in Rural Vietnam: 1993 To 2004

Abstract

This paper decomposes the welfare gap between majority and minority ethnic groups in rural Vietnam between 1993 and 2004. Approximately one-half of the household expenditure gap in each year is attributable to treatment effects. Geographic variables explain less than one-fifth of this gap. The ethnic gap increased by 14.6 percent between 1993 and 2004. Over one-half of the gap’s increase is linked to temporal changes in unobservable factors, and less than one-quarter to the improvement of majority endowments compared to those of the minorities. Broadly similar findings are detected using mean and quantile regression analysis.