Poverty Reduction in Vietnam: Achievements and Challenges
In retrospect, Vietnam has indeed gained impressive achievements in poverty reduction. Broad-based economic growth has improved the well-being of almost everyone in the entire population. The General Statistical Office estimates that the poverty rate fell consistently from 58 percent in 1993 to 37.4 percent in 1998, 28.9 percent in 2002, 16 percent in 2006 and 14.5 percent in 2008. Some 28 million people are estimated to have been lifted out of poverty over approximately one and a half decades, an achievement widely applauded. People who remain in poverty saw their well-being considerably improved over this period as well. The average poor’s shortfall of consumption from the poverty line, measured by the poverty gap rate, also fell steadily from 18.5 percent in 1993 to as low as 3.5 percent in 2008. The poverty severity rate, which gives higher weight to the poorest among the poor, declined from 7.9 percent in 1993 to 1.2 percent in 2008. Other non-income indicators such as access of the poor to basic social services and infrastructures (education, health, electricity, road, water and sanitation, etc.) also confirm this very positive trend. Notably, while only less than 37 percent of the poor population had access to electricity in 1993, now almost 90 percent have electricity for daily use.
For more information, please read at (English): Poverty Reduction in Vietnam: Achievements and Challenges
Ref: Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences. (2011). Poverty reduction in Vietnam: achievements and challenges.
