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Rice farmers in Vietnam face many difficulties achieving technical efficiency (TE), which can be measured by the distance to the production frontier, in rice production due to non-optimal combinations of inputs and the influence of household socioeconomic characteristics. This study investigates the TE of rice production by applying stochastic frontier analysis to raw data obtained from the Vietnamese Households Living Standards Survey 2016 (VHLSS 2016) database. In addition, organic fertilizers now demand much attention worldwide because of their environmentally friendly characteristics. Therefore, this study identifies the effects of organic fertilizer choices on the TE of rice production. The results show that farmers in Vietnam achieved 87.6 percent TE and that most factors tested had significant effects on rice production. Instead of rice monoculture, the four main factors with strong and positive effects on TE levels were intensive labor, irrigation, mixing crops instead of rice monoculture, and education. Moreover, this study also revealed that organic fertilizer plays a vital role in growing rice by applying propensity score matching (PSM) between farmers who use or do not use irrigation facilities in rice production. While in the process of building a system, the government should focus on rice producers to strive for maximum efficiency with regard to labor productivity and mixed-crop farming, and to take proper measures to improve rice productivity and quality through the use of organic fertilizers. As a result, this study revealed that the use of organic fertilizers for rice production in Vietnam does not always benefit households’ TE.

Energy poverty measures are gradually becoming less relevant for fast-developing countries, where the energy mix consists of traditional and modern energies. We propose a new approach for measuring energy poverty by modifying the Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) demand system to include implied disutility of energy use. The disutility arises from the effects of price or income changes and the use of polluting energies. Using data from Vietnam, we found that energy poverty could happen at higher income levels than the level considered in the literature, and higher incomes may not encourage households to climb the energy ladder. However, consuming carbon-intensive fuel does not necessarily mean energy poor.

BackgroundPoor health increases the likelihood of experiencing poverty by reducing a person’s ability to work and imparting costs associated with receiving medical treatment. Universal health care is a means of protecting against the impoverishing impact of high healthcare costs. This study aims to document the recent trends in the amount paid by Australian households out-of-pocket for healthcare, identify any inequalities in the distribution of this expenditure, and to describe the impact that healthcare costs have on household living standards in a high-income country with a long established universal health care system. We undertook this analysis using a longitudinal, nationally representative dataset – the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, using data collected annually from 2006 to 2014. Out of pocket payments covered those paid to health practitioners, for medication and in private health insurance premiums; catastrophic expenditure was defined as spending 10% or more of household income on healthcare.ResultsAverage total household expenditure on healthcare items remained relatively stable between 2006 and 2014 after adjusting for inflation, changing from $3133 to $3199. However, after adjusting for age, self-reported health status, and year, those in the lowest income group (decile one) had 15 times the odds (95% CI, 11.7–20.8) of having catastrophic health expenditure compared to those in the highest income group (decile ten). The percentage of people in income decile 2 and 3 who had catastrophic health expenditure also increased from 13% to 19% and 7% to 13% respectively.ConclusionsOngoing monitoring of out of pocket healthcare expenditure is an essential part of assessing health system performance, even in countries with universal health care.

In addition to income, the equipment of households with durable goods represents a significant indicator of living standards and the quality of life in the population in question. The paper concerns the equipment of rural households with selected durable goods. Based on the possession of durable goods specified in survey, it was possible to distinguish certain types of the surveyed rural households. Analyses of the findings from the survey have shown both improved equipment of rural households with durable goods and a marked advantage of farming families over the landless rural population in this respect. Considering the abovementioned indicators of equipment with durable goods and changes in this respect, it can be concluded that aspirations of the surveyed rural families reflect changing consumption patterns towards higher-order values. The analysis was mostly based on the survey of families residing in 76 villages across Poland, conducted by the IAFE-NRI.

Abstract—The article considers one of the potential reasons for the situation when economic growth in the country does not transform into an increase in incomes of the population. This is the established sectoral structure of the economy, which determines the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the jobs being created, their distribution by industries, as well as involvement in the process of distributing the added value created in the country. For the American and Russian economies, estimates are given reflecting the number of jobs produced by three groups of industries (high-tech, high-level medium-tech and science-intensive activities) in related industries (per 100 jobs). These estimates are derived from data of the National Accounts System. It is shown that in the Russian economy, consumer spending of a higher decile group to a greater extent forms the demand for products and services of service industries, which determines the maintenance of jobs in them that do not always require high qualifications, remuneration, and productivity. It is suggested that one of the requirements for the future structure of the Russian economy should be the quality of jobs created by it with an appropriate level of labor remuneration, making possible sustainable support and increase in the income of the middle class.

This study is conducted to investigate the impact of migration on living standards of households with migrants in the context of Vietnam. Data were collected from the results of Vietnam Household Living Standards in the time series. Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition was employed to decompose the source of differences in income between households with migrants and households without migrants. The results show that households with migrants in the multiyear dataset had a higher income than nonmigrant households, and migration had different impacts on expenditure at different quantiles. By conducting quantile regression, migration had positive impacts on expenditures at the 10% and 50% quantile, but no impact at the 90% quantile. Based on the findings, some implications in policies for managers, such as appropriate policies for poor workers in order to improve their living standards, especially poor households in rural or mountainous areas, are proposed.

Child chronic illness/ disability can present significant challenges for children, families and society that require appropriate policy responses; yet little is known about the demands placed on families resources from an economics perspective in terms of its impact on household income and the extra income required to achieve the same standard of living as families who do not have a child with a chronic illness/disability. The paper uses data from the Growing Up in Ireland National survey dataset for nine year olds. It is the first study to empirically investigate the impact of child chronic illness/disability on earnings, standard of living and the extra cost of disability together. It is also the first study to explicitly address endogeneity in the standard of living model by using a two-stage process where residuals were harvested to provide efficient estimates. The findings show that families experience significant disadvantage and economic hardship due to reduced household income and a lower standard of living due to the extra cost of disability that would require considerable income to compensate. Policy implications of these findings suggest that a tiered approach to disability support payments which encompass broader criteria for inclusion based on varying severity levels be introduced to alleviate the financial hardship and compromised economic wellbeing of families affected. In addition, more innovative policies are required to implement appropriate timely access to health and social care services and flexi parental employment, which in turn requires the provision of adequate access to high quality educational and care facilities.

Food environments in Southeast Asia's emerging economies are rapidly evolving, alongside fast-paced socioeconomic and demographic changes. The widespread expansion of supermarkets and parallel restructuring of traditional markets in Vietnam are likely to impact patterns of household food acquisition. Using provincial-level time series data on the abundance of supermarkets and multiyear household survey data, this paper examines the impact of the differential country-wide presence of supermarkets with indices of food quality and quantity acquired by households. We classified provinces into three clusters based on the number of supermarkets: high (HighSM), medium (MedSM), and low (LowSM). We found that a higher number of supermarkets associated with the exceedable Vietnamese recommendation composition of macronutrients at the household-level, but not food quantity.Households with higher per capita food expenditure in HighSM provinces tended to procure foods with higher protein content and lower shares of fat and carbohydrate as compared to similar households in the others provinces. Ethnic minority households in MedSM clusters obtained food with lower carbohydrate and higher fat:protein ratios in comparison to ethnic majority households. Additionally, larger-sized households in HighSM provinces typically bought foods with higher fat shares than smaller-sized households. In contrast, in MedSM and LowSM provinces, larger-sized households typically procured foods with higher protein and lower fat shares. The diversity of foods obtained by households in MedSM and LowSM provinces decreased over time. Within the Midlands and Northern Mountains Area we observed a decrease in the diversity of food acquired among households in the LowSM clusters. This study elucidates potential impacts of the supermarket expansion on household food baskets. Insights from this study can be used to provide evidences for policy recommendation and to design and target interventions aimed at streng

This book is a case study of Vietnam's efforts to fight poverty using market-oriented land reforms. But what role did the reforms play in poverty reduction? Did the efficiency gains from reform come at a cost to equity? Was rising rural landlessness in the wake of reforms a sign of success or failure?.