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This research provides the first evidence on how labour supply and earnings may adjust to the expansion of insurance benefits under the 2014 Social Insurance Law reform. The data for this study come from the Vietnam Labour Force Surveys. Both difference-in-differences and fixed-effect models are used. The estimated results reveal negative reform effects on the work duration and earnings of both sexes and for both rural and urban areas. They also point out some definite effects on different groups of local and migrant workers. However, little evidence on sick leave impact is found. The link between social insurance status and the labour market outcomes is scrutinized as well. The findings indicate that urban workers of both sexes benefit from accessing to compulsory insurance with respect to earnings, but only rural female workers do it. Moreover, these effects come mostly from groups of non-migrant workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contributes to a growing literature body of studies aimed at explaining socio-economic-related health inequality in non-communicable diseases (NCDs), with a focus on older people who are commonly affected by socio-economic gradient in later life. It identifies factors associated with self-reported NCDs and examines socio-economic-related health inequality in self-reported NCDs between rural and urban Vietnamese older people. This cross-sectional study utilised data from the Viet Nam Ageing Survey. A sample of 2,682 older people aged 60 and over (urban = 703, rural = 1,979) was analysed. Concentration indices were computed to measure socio-economic inequalities in self-reported NCDs. Concentration index decomposition analysis was performed to determine the relative contributions of the determinants to explaining those inequalities. Significant socio-economic inequalities in self-reported NCDs favouring the rich were found, in which the degree of inequality was more pronounced in urban areas than in their rural counterparts. Household wealth and social health insurance were the main drivers contributing to increased socio-economic inequalities in self-reported NCDs in urban and rural areas, respectively. Among disadvantaged groups, older people living alone, with lowest wealth and with social health insurance had highest probability of reporting at least one NCD for both areas. Public policies aimed at narrowing wealth gaps and expanding and improving principle roles of social health insurance should prioritise the most disadvantaged groups in order to achieve health equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we show that health insurance and health-care services have been expanded in Viet Nam over the past decade and had the potential to reach various groups of older persons (defined as those aged 60 or more). Yet, a number of challenges still remain that greatly influence the current health-care system as regards affordability and adequate service provision. The most critical of these issues is that the most vulnerable groups among older persons have lower access rates and a greater financial burden (that is, out-of-pocket expenses). To deal with those issues, we suggest certain policy directions, including developing communal health systems and guaranteeing the financial sustainability of the health insurance fund by monitoring both service providers and users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vietnam Living Standard Surveys (VLSS), a part of the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study Household Surveys, are supposed to be representative of the entire population in Vietnam. However. we uncover an anomaly that the amount of remittances received from domestic sources is significantly larger than the amount of remittances sent to domestic" sources, implying that the survey is at least not representative of remittance senders. By further exploring a unique characteristic of the survey questions about remittances, we determine that, in particular, female and urban-dwelling remittance senders are underrepresented in the sulwey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses both parametric and non-parametric approaches to estimate technical, allocative, and economic efficiencies for the agriculture production in sixty provinces of Vietnam in the period 1990-2005. Under different technology specifications, both approaches show that the average technical, allocative, and economic efficiency estimates were not high, and there would be a large room for the studied provinces to improve their agricultural production efficiency. To examine consistency of the estimates from two approaches under different specifications of returns to scale, we use Spearman rank test, and the results indicate that parametric and non-parametric approaches provide different estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, Viet Nam has been experiencing a dramatic growth in remittance flows. This article uses the Viet Nam Living Standards Surveys of 1992-1993 and 1997-1998 to study the role of gender in both sending and receiving remittance flows. Knowing about gender differences will help to better explain the impact of remittances and to understand the nature of gender roles during a period of rapid economic transformation. There are important distinctions between men and women, such as a greater sense of responsibility among women for the intergenerational transfers of remittances (particularly between parents and children), while men tend to take more responsibility for intragenerational transfers. In addition, after controlling for other factors and sharing remittances between spouses who live together, evidence suggests that women have a greater likelihood of both sending and receiving remittances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the WHO's Situation Report on the COVID-19 pandemic from 21 January 2020 to 30 March 2020 along with other health, demographic, and macroeconomic indicators from the WHO's Application Programming Interface and the World Bank's Development Indicators, this paper explores the death rates of infected persons and their possible associated factors. Through the panel analysis, we found consistent results that healthcare system conditions, particularly the number of hospital beds and medical staff, have played extremely important roles in reducing death rates of COVID-19 infected persons. In addition, both the mortality rates due to different non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and rate of people aged 65 and over were significantly related to the death rates. We also found that controlling international and domestic travelling by air along with increasingly popular anti-COVID-19 actions (i.e., quarantine and social distancing) would help reduce the death rates in all countries. We conducted tests for robustness and found that the Driscoll and Kraay (1998) method was the most suitable estimator with a finite sample, which helped confirm the robustness of our estimations. Based on the findings, we suggest that preparedness of healthcare systems for aged populations need more attentions from the public and politicians, regardless of income level, when facing COVID-19-like pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]