UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM- NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FORMA IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS Determinants of Homeownership in Vietnam A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By NGUYEN NGOC TUAN. GIAO DUC " TRUONG £l~l HQC KINH TE TP.HCM THUVItN ~ 31'1 HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2009 UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FORMA IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS Determinants of Homeownership in Vietnam A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS Academic Supervisor: DR. HA THUC VIEN Student: NGUYEN NGOC TUAN HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2009 UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Ha Thuc Vien, my supervisor, for his valuable comments and assistance.
Without his support and encouragement, my thesis would not be finished. I also thank to my classmate Mr. Nguyen Thanh Danh who advised me c:in data processing for the thesis. I would like to special thank Assoc.
Nguyen Trong Hoai who has often urged and encouraged me to complete my thesis. Supports from Vietnam-Netherlands Programme for MA m Development Economics' staff and classmates are fully acknowledged. My heartfelt gratitude also goes to my family, particularly my wife and children who are my love and motivation during the studying time. HCMC, Winter 2009 NGUYEN NGOC TUAN UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I declare that "Determinants of Homeownership in Vietnam" is my own work, that it has not been submitted to any degree or examination at any other universities, and that all the sources used or quoted are indicated and acknowledged by complete references.
HCMC, December 2009 NGUYEN NGOC TUAN II UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Homeownership is considered as one of most essential needs for people living in the country. It reflects the quality of life through the dwelling condition. The percentage of households that own private houses is increasing year to year. Furthennore, Vietnam is a developing country that is targeting to a market-oriented economy.
This has created many opportunities for improving its whole economy and society. Consequently, the probability ofhomeownership is improved, as well. However, the rate of poor households is still rather high in Vietnam. This may leads to many difficulties in obtaining satisfaction from homeownership.
Therefore, this study is to examine determinants of homeownership of households in Vietnam on the basic of descriptive statistics and econometrics. It is found that the household characteristics such as income, the number of members and assets of the household are statistically significant effect on the probability of homeownership. Also, age and gender of the household heads are found to be significantly correlated its homeownership. However, marital status and education attainment of the head are insignificant.
Other dete1minants are social-economic characteristics such as credit assistant program, immigration and employment. The result is that, immigration and employment have significant effects on homeownership probability, excluding credit assistant programs. Ill UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST 0 F TABLES. vi LIST OF FIGURES .vi LIST OF BOXES. vi ABBREVIATIONS AND GLOSSARIES. vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .2 Objective of study .4 Research methodology and scope of research.
4 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 Basic terms and concepts .2 Assessment of economic theoretical approaches. 16 CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .1 Qualitative choice models for durable goods .2 Methods of homeownership research. 22 IV UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.3 Major determinants ofhomeownership .1 Justification of models .2 Econometric model specification. 30 CHAPTER IV: AN OVERVIEW OF HOMEOWNERSHIP AND HOUSING SECTOR IN VIETNAM .1 An overview ofhomeownership in Vietnam .2 Changing in housing policies .3 Challenges ofhomeownership in the new economy .4 Housing demand in Vietnam: An example from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.43 CHAPTER V: ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS AND RESULTS .2 Logistic model ofhomeownership .3 Logistic regression results .4 Measurement of goodness-of-fit.
56 CHAPTER VI: CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS. 65 v UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLE Table 3.1: Mean of determinants ofhomeownership .2: Group of determinants by binary characteristics. 38 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Wage and price setting and the natural level of employment. 14 LIST OF BOXES Box 4.1: Work starts on National Assembly House project.2: Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) to expand worker accommodations .46 Vl UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABBREVIATIONS AND GLOSSARIES FMO :The entrepreneurial development bank of the Netherlands GEN :Gender HCMC : Ho Chi Minh City HHINC : Household income HHSIZE : Household size IMMI :Immigration LA : Lost Angeles Logit :Logistic NLSY :National Longitudinal Survey of Youth PS : Price setting PUMS : Public Use Micro-data Sample STATA : Statistics/Data Analysis U.S :United States UNDP : United Nations Development Program VHLSS : Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey ws : Wage setting WTO :World-Trade-Organization Vll UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Problem statement Vietnam is a transition economy that has changed from a centrally planned economy to a market economy.
Over last two decades, Vietnam has increasingly integrated into the larger world of economies. Particularly, since joining the WTO in November 2006, Vietnam's economy has gradually tightened with the global economy strongly. As a result, Vietnam's economy has grown more than 7% per year and income per capita has quickly increased from US$ 220 in 1994 to US$ 1,024 in 2008 (U. Department of State 2009).
Economic reform has also brought Vietnam into a new era of development, industrialization, modemization and urbanization. Together with development process, economic growth and rapid population growth, there are appropriate 86 million people, of them 29.6% are living in cities. This places a particularly important role on the development of housing sector and it has become urgently important at nowadays (Mizuno & Ishigami 1999). In 1991 Vietnamese people are allowed to have the right of owning a house by an ordinance on housing.
Therefore, homeownership is a wish of Vietnamese people (Geertman 2003). In according with economic growth, homeownership has become a proper demand in the life for a household because it is related to financial benefits (possible capital gains by selling a house later) and non-monetary benefits (physical health and development of children's cognitive capacities) in the future (Leppel 2007). In the perception of home owners, homeownership is embodied the personal success and happiness (Dietz & Haurin 2003). In addition, homeownership also increases local community stability and commitment in making a choice to live in where a household owns a house (Ratledge 1999).
As a result, homeownership increases the demography stability in comparison with house renters that often change their accommodations (Dietz UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. In "Urban Development and Housing Sector in Viet Nam" research, Mizuno and Ishigami (1999) found that households do not like to rent a house for their accommodations. It implies that Vietnamese people would like to enhance their sense of being ownership of a house. This really plays an important role in improving the quality of life for the citizens.
In other words, homeownership is not only helping people have the stable accommodation, but also helping the government be easier in administration and development local communities. In order to ensure its long-term sustainable development, the local government authorities have made better activities for housing sector by enforcing the law on residential housing to support homeownership for society, especially for low income families (Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association 2008). However, homeownership probability of a household always varies with changes in economy and society, especially in the household characteristics such as household income, gender, marital status, education, age and household size (Hood 1999). In addition, homeownership IS associated with financial ability (such as savings, credit) of a household (Mizuno & Ishigami 1999).
In addition to household characteristics, homeownership is also related to employment in which individuals would like to own a home if they can easily get jobs (Gabriel & Painter 2001) and immigration status due to its characteristics (Coulson 1999) because, nowadays, there are a lot of people moving to big cities from other provinces for living. It rs, therefore, interesting to find out what factors may influence the homeownership probability of every household in Vietnam. This plays an important role for increasing of the opportunity of homeownership that is related to individual well- beings and development of the local communities (Cisneros 1995).2 Objective of study The research objective is to examine determinants ofhomeownership ofhouseholds in Vietnam by: (i) Household characteristics: household income, household size and household assets; age, marital status, gender and level of educational attainment of the household head. 2 UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com (ii) Socioeconomic characteristics: immigration status; credit accessibility and employment that implies the number of members working in a household.
The thesis aims to establish a conceptual model for estimating the probability of homeownership on the basis of household and socioeconomic characteristics. From results of estimating, policy recommendations are suggested. The result can be useful for policy makers. They can base on the most significant determinants of homeownership to make positive policies for improving homeownership probability of households in Vietnam.3 Research questions The study is to answer the following questions: (i) How do household characteristics affect on homeownership probability of households in Vietnam? (ii) How do socioeconomic characteristics affect on homeownership probability of households in Vietnam? Specifically, the thesis aims to the following questions: (i) Is the educational attainment level of the household head a mam factor of homeownership probability? (ii) Does the employment really affect on homeownership probability? (iii) Is the impact of immigration status significant on the homeownership probability? 1.4 Research methodology and scope of research In order to have the right answers for research questions, econometric model and descriptive statistic methods are used to examine the relationship between the homeownership probability and its determinants.
Specifically, the thesis is based on a Logit model for estimating determinants of the homeownership probability of households and a descriptive statistics analysis about the situation ofhomeownership in Vietnam. 3 UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Data come from a secondary source, taken from Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey 2006 that is abbreviated to VHLSS 2006. This survey is carried out by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, with the support of UNDP and World Bank. Data is surveyed throughout the country.
As the thesis analyzes for the whole country, so the sample size will be 9,189 households throughout Vietnam extracted and regressed by STATA.5 Structure of thesis Following the introduction chapter, the thesis is continued with Chapter II in which the most relevant economic theories and empirical studies to homeownership and its determinants are reviewed. An adaptation of economic theories and empirical studies to the homeownership model is analyzed. Chapter III justifies methodology that includes analytical framework and research method. In Chapter IV, an overview of homeownership is analyzed on the basic of VHLSS 2006 and housing sector development in Vietnam is presented.
Model regression by econometric analysis and evaluates the results, including presentation of data set, logistic regression results and results interpretation are introduced in Chapter V. The last chapter is conclusions and policy implications. 4 UAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter is developed to present a relevant theories and empirical studies of this empirical work and it is divided into two sections. The first section is to review of theories that lay the theoretical foundation for this work.
It is organized into two parts.