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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.

Given the level of economic development in Viet Nam, the country’s health sector is quite impressive. The country has now set its sights establishing universal health insurance coverage by 2015. This article aims to, first, describe the current health-care system in Viet Nam accompanied by a number of challenges the country faces in delivering and financing health-related services, and then provides some policy discussions on how to achieve this ambitious plan. The article also stresses the important role in attaining universal health insurance coverage by providing quality services and guaranteeing financial protection for both health-care suppliers and consumers.

Living arrangements and family support for older persons have become an increasingly important policy concern in developing and rapidly aging Asia. Formulating a sound elderly care policy for the region will benefit from empirically examining how living arrangements, particularly coresidence, and intergenerational exchanges of financial, instrumental, and emotional support are associated with old-age psychological health. This study analyzes data from nationally representative aging surveys in Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand for 2011-2012 to offer a comparative perspective from Southeast Asia where various kinship systems coexist. Results suggest that coresidence with a child of culturally preferred gender significantly improves the emotional health of Vietnamese and Thai elders but with different implications. In Vietnam, living with a married son is more beneficial to parents' psychological wellbeing than living with other children. In Thailand, coresidence regardless of the child's gender improves old-age psychological wellbeing but living with a daughter brings greater benefits than living only with son. Evidence points to the importance of understanding the dominant kinship system that may shape normative filial expectations and gender role expectations within the family. In Vietnam and Thailand, the positive association holds even after intergenerational support is controlled, suggesting that the value of culturally preferred coresidence goes beyond practical functions. In Myanmar, there are almost no significant differences in psychological wellbeing among elderly across various living arrangements, except between coresidence and network living arrangements. For all settings, we do not find evidence in support of network family arrangements as a complete substitute for coresidence in terms of promoting old-age psychological wellbeing after filial support is controlled. Our study highlights important cultural nuances for theorizing the nature of the relationship between living arrangements and old-age psychological health, and presents the important need for more rigorous investigation of the causal links between these two phenomena in future research.

During a time of rapid economic transformation in Vietnam, we examined two possibilities for elderly support: living together with children and receiving remittances. Our analysis used four household surveys conducted in Vietnam between 1992 and 2004. With the highly detailed 1997–1998 survey, we found that 73.1 percent of Vietnamese elderly are living with children and 34.8 percent were either receiving remittances directly or married to a recipient. From our logistic regression analysis, we determined further that living with children and remittances both serve continuing roles for elderly support, and our findings suggest that expanding the pension system in Vietnam can potentially play an important role in reducing elderly poverty without crowding out these other support mechanisms.

Remittances can potentially help to promote economic development by providing a mechanism to share risks, reduce poverty, and improve equality. However, the overall impacts of remittances are uncertain from the view of economic theory as different mechanisms lead to opposite impacts. Since the 1990s, Vietnam has experienced a dramatic growth in remittance flows from abroad. Vietnam is a unique case for study, as economic motives historically played a smaller role in outward migration. Fortunately, household survey data is available for this time period, allowing for a detailed analysis of the impacts of international remittances on Vietnam. Specifically, we examine the characteristics of recipients and the impacts of international remittances on economic inequality and poverty. We conclude that international remittances are helping to improve equality. As such, new development policies must also account for potential impacts on remittance flows.

This paper estimates and compares efficiency performance of 32 commercial banks in Vietnam during 2001–2005, as well as identifies possible factors determining such efficiency performance. Efficiency is measured by a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and super-efficiency measure through a slacks-based model (SBM) under the assumption of variable returns to scale (VRS). We find that there were a small number of efficient banks, and there would be room for these banks to improve their production efficiency. Moreover, in comparison with small banks, large banks do not guarantee high super efficiency scores. The results from a Tobit regression model provide such interesting findings as negative impact of state ownership, positive influence of bank size and market share, but no impact of labor quality.