Description

Beginning in 2003, the Vietnam government implemented two programs (Program 132 and Program 134) for the purpose of distributing agricultural land to land poor ethnic minority households in the Central Highlands. The programs were motivated by concerns of growing economic disparities between the ethnic minority and Kinh, and social unrest.

We draw on a unique household and commune level survey we carried out in the Central Highlands in January of 2008 (and linked to the 2002 Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey) covering 1650 households in order evaluate program 132 and 134 implementation and the impact of this “treatment” on the welfare of ethnic minority households. Our analysis reveals only weak links between potential eligibility and treatment, and significant heterogeneity in the impact of land redistribution on ethnic minority household welfare. It also suggests that limited access to land by ethnic minority households is probably not the most important constraint on their welfare.

Loren Brandt is a Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto specializing in the Chinese economy. He has been at the University of Toronto since 1987. He is also a research fellow at the IZA (The Institute for the Study of Labor) in Bonn, Germany. He has published widely on the Chinese economy in leading economic journals, and has been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in both China and Vietnam. He was co-editor and major contributor to /China’s Great Economic Transformation/ (Cambridge University Press, 2008), a landmark study that provides an integrated analysis of China’s unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. Brandt was also one of the area editors for Oxford University Press’ five-volume /Encyclopedia of Economic History/ (2003). His current research focuses on issues of industrial upgrading in China, inequality dynamics, and economic growth and structural change.