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A more holistic understanding of the benefits of sight-restoring cataract surgery requires a focus that goes beyond income and employment, to include a wider array of well-being measures. The objective of this study is to examine the monetary and non-monetary benefits of cataract surgery on both patients as well as their caregivers in Vietnam. Participants were randomly recruited from a Ho-Chi-Minh City Hospital. A total of 82 cataract patients and 83 caregivers participated in the survey conducted for this study. Paired t-tests, Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests, and regression analysis are used to detect any statistically significant differences in various measures of well-being for patients and caregivers before and after surgery. There are statistically significant improvements in monetary and non-monetary measures of well-being for both patients and caregivers approximately three months after undergoing cataract surgery, compared with baseline assessments collected prior to surgery. Non-monetary measures of well-being include self-assessments of overall health, mental health, hope, self-efficacy, happiness and life satisfaction. For patients, the benefits included statistically significant improvements in earnings, mobility, self-care, the ability to undertake daily activities, self-assessed health and mental health, life satisfaction, hope, and self-efficacy (p<0.01). For caregivers, attendance at work improved alongside overall health, mental health, hope, self-efficacy, happiness and life satisfaction, three months post-surgery (p<0.01). Restoring sight has positive impacts for those suffering from cataracts and their caregivers. Sometimes the benefits are almost equal in their magnitude. The study has also demonstrated that many of these impacts are non-monetary in nature. It is clear that estimates of the rate of return to restoring sight that focus only on financial gains will underestimate the true returns to society of restoring sight from cataract surgeries.

The generation and management of urban solid waste is an urgent and growing problem in Hochiminh City, as elsewhere in the world. An important contribution to solving the city's waste management problem is made by the recycling industry. The well-organized private system of collection, trade and recycling includes door-to-door itinerant buyers, entirely women, who buy solid waste products from households; a range of small, medium, and big shopkeepers who purchase waste from the buyers; middle-men who link the shopkeepers with the recyclers; and the recycling or production units that transform products for sale to consumers. Earnings of itinerant buyers are low and may be declining. However, their self-employment is critical because they are often the main economic support of their families. Shopkeepers enjoy better standards of living but economic competition and recent environmental regulations threaten the survival of the industry. Policy options are offered for attempting to ensure the survival of recyclers and itinerant buyers, those who are most immediately vulnerable.