Economic Growth, Poverty, and Household Welfare in Vietnam

Viet Nam is an economic success story -
it transformed itself from a country in the 1980s as one of
the poorest in the world, to a country in the 1990s with one
of the world's highest growth rates. With the adoption
of a new market-oriented policies, Viet Nam averaged an
economic growth rate of 8 percent per year from 1990 to
2000, a growth rate accompanied by a large reduction in
poverty, stemming from significant increases in school
enrollment, and a rapid decrease in child malnutrition. The
book uses an unusually rich set of macroeconomic, and
household survey data, to examine several topics: the causes
of the economic turnaround, and prospects for future growth;
the impact of economic growth on household welfare, as
measured by consumption expenditures, health, education, and
other socioeconomic indicators; and, the nature of poverty
in Viet Nam, and the effectiveness of government policies,
intended to reduce same. Although the country's past
achievements are impressive, future progress is by no means ensured.