A Study On The Poverty Issue In Central Highlands Of Vietnam

This research focus on examining the key factors affecting to poverty in theCentral Highlands by using data of the Vietnam Living Standard Survey in2008providedby General Statistics Office (GSO). Base on that, suggested some policies are reasonableand effectively to contribute poverty reduction for the study area. By using statistical,description and comparison method, the study showed that most of the poor householdshave large-scale demographic; high ratio of dependents; low level of education andoccupational skills; the number of women-headed households account for sizableproportion; expenditure of poor households are often very tight, mostly spent on food andlimited access to health services.Besides, by using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method to estimate the impact offactors on average incomes of poor households in Central Highlands, the research indicatesthat incomes per capita of poor households in the Central Highlands region are affected bymany factors including education and size of households, marital status have a strongest andmost positive impact and very statistically significant. The study also found that the poorKinh ethnic households which living in urban area will have incomes per capita higher thanhouseholds in rural. Kinh ethnic households with husband and wife will lead to higherincomes than household’s ethnic minority, the Kinh ethnic households having professionalskills, higher average incomes than others; Poor households with higher education level willlead to higher incomes than the poor households with lower education level. Finally, poorhouseholds that have headed by a male will have higher income than the poor householdsthat have headed by a female.Research result suggests that: Central government and Local governments shouldhave effectively policies to reduce poverty. In particular are priority policies to improveeducation, reduce number of dependents, create more jobs to increase income forhousehold’s ethnic minorities and perform well social welfare programs in order to ensurefairness for poor households only the wife or husband is the head of households.