MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS, HO CHI MINH CITY ---------------------- PHAN BICH TRAN RURAL WOMEN AND GOOD JOBS A CASE STUDY OF KRONGPA VILLAGE MASTER OF PUBLIC POLICY THESIS HO CHI MINH CITY, 2011 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS, HO CHI MINH CITY FULBRIGHT ECONOMICS TEACHING PROGRAM ---------------------- PHAN BICH TRAN RURAL WOMEN AND GOOD JOBS A CASE STUDY OF KRONGPA VILLAGE Public Policy Major Code: 603114 MASTER OF PUBLIC POLICY THESIS SUPERVISOR Dr. PINCUS HO CHI MINH CITY, 2011 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com i CERTIFICATION I certify that the substance of the thesis has not already been submitted for any degree and is not being currently submitted for any other degrees. I certify that to the best of my knowledge any help received in preparing the thesis and all sources used have been ackknowleged in the thesis. The study does not necessarily reflect the views of the Ho Chi Minh Economics University or Fulbright Economics Teaching Program.
Author Phan Bich Tran TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my deep gratitude to my parents and my husband who always encourages me in my life and my studying. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Pincus, who has helped me in performing the thesis. With rich knowledge, experience and enthusiasm, he has effectively contributed to my thesis.
I would like to thank all my teachers in Fulbright Economics Teaching Program, who have retransmitted a lot of their knowledge and experience to me. I would like to thank all officials in KrongPa People’s Committee, who have supported a lot of worthy information and knowledge about people and cultures in KrongPa village during research process. Last but not least, I express my thanks to all of my friends who share a lot of knowledge and encourage me in performing the study. Phan Bich Tran Ho Chi Minh City – May, 2011 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com iii ABSTRACT The study focuses on testing existing theories about falls in poverty, escapes from poverty escaping and employment in a group of women in KrongPa village.
The thesis finds that the three main factors affec falling into poverty are health care expenses, debt and loss of land due to building the Ba Ha hydroelectric power. Income diversification and farm size are the two main factors helping women escape from poverty. Meanwhile, the reason why some women get better jobs than others is because they have high educational attainment, they attended government agricultural programs, their parents have enough resources to support their education and migration to big cities and they have larger farm sizes. Therefore effective policy recommendations to increase the rate of women earning stable incomes are focusing on increasing access to education as well as improving their farm skills.
TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………… 1 1. The scope and the purpose of the study………………………………………… 3 1. Research questions of the study………………………………………………… 3 1. The structure of the study……………………………………………………….
3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………. Theory of Poverty and Poverty Reduction…………………………………6 2. Theory of Poverty in Ethnic Minorities…………………………………… 7 2. Theory among women…………………………………………………….
8 CHAPTER 3: DATA AND METHODOLOGY……………………………………… 9 3. Data……………………………………………………………………………… 10 CHAPTER 4: KRONGPA CASE STUDY AND RESULTS………………………… 12 4. KrongPa case study……………………………………………………………… 12 4. Results…………………………………………………………………………… 17 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION………………………………………………………… 33 5.
Limitations of the study ………………………………………………………… 36 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com v ABBREVIATIONS MOLISA: Ministry of Labor – Invalids and Social Affairs. VHLSS: Vietnam Households Living Standard Survey. VBSP: Vietnam Bank for Social Policy TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com vi TABLES Table 4.1: Poverty rate compared with others, 2008-2011…………………………….2: Number of households, poor households in Son Hoa in 3 years………….3: Poverty over 3 years in KrongPa village…………………………………… 13 Table 4.4: Poverty rate in KrongPa village in 2011…………………………………… 13 Table 4.5: Micro Credit in KrongPa village…………………………………………….1: Cost of daily meal per household in KrongPa village……………………….2: How often each household has meat in their daily meal…………………….3: Number of winter coats of each child……………………………………….4: Credit in KrongPa village………………………………………………….5: Favorite payment methods of credit in KrongPa village…………………… 19 Table 4.6: Education levels of women’s children in KrongPa village……………….7: The reasons why aged school children dropped out of school………………20 Table 4.8: Number of rooms of in KrongPa villagers’ house………………………….9: Households goods in each KrongPa villager’s house……………………….10: Reasons of falling into poverty of KrongPa villagers………………………24 Table 4.11: Diversifications of income source of women who escaped poverty in KrongPa village…………………………………………………………………….12: Farm sizes of women who escaped poverty in KrongPa village………….13: Incomes of women who escaped poverty in KrongPa village…………….14: Women’s main jobs in KrongPa village………………………………….15: Women’s second jobs in KrongPa village………………………………… 27 Table 4.16: Compare women’s main jobs and education……………………………… 27 Table 4.17: Comparison of farm yields among women who attended agricultural program and those who did not…………………………………………………………………….18 – Compare women’s main jobs and skills………………………………….19 – Comparison of women’s main jobs and farm sizes……………………… 30 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com vii FIGURES Figure 1.1: Income among kinds of employment……………………………………… 2 Figure 1.2: Labor between urban and rural areas……………………………………… 2 Figure 1.3: Female labor in rural areas………………………………………………… 2 Figure 4.1: Trends in household poverty in KrongPa…………………………………. 16 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.
Problem Statement While researchers and policy makers are finding out solutions to help people overcome their poverty, the poor themselves cannot wait for the benefits of economic growth. They actively seek ways to survive without help from the government. They do not even know that they are the subjects of the government’s concern. It is difficult to find out the causes and trends of poverty from the poverty data.
But the story behind these causes and reasons are different in countries all over the world. In order to understand the causes of poverty we must move beyond static analysis of headcount rates to investigate poverty dynamics, in other words, the reason households fall into poverty or climb out of poverty. According to Antolin et al (1999), job loss is one of the reasons that people become poor. Good jobs bring a stable income which is enough for daily living and expenses such as school and medical fees.
Jobs are important to study because they bring income which is the only criterion to determine the poverty line in every part of the world. The official poverty line in Vietnam has been changed from VND 200,000 to VND 400,000 per month in rural areas due to inflation in recent years (Decision No. This change must make the poverty rate in rural areas increase dramatically where income from farm employment is much lower than in non- farm employment. In Vietnam, the bottom twenty percent of the population by comsumption works in agriculture while the richest twenty percent is in non-farm employment (Figure 1.
It is obvious that most of the rural population participates is in farm employment (Figure 1.2) including wage and self employment. Despite the uncertainty of income, the importance of farm employment to the economy is certain. The government tries so hard to create as much off-farm employment as possible in rural areas to diversify income. Empirical studies show that about fifty percent of rural women quickly join in off-farm jobs to diversify their income while their husbands keep in farm work.
That helps their family cope with changes in agriculture product prices and the seasonality of agricultural employment and income (Figure 1. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.3 – Female labor in rural area Source: VHLSS 2008 Studying access to jobs and their role in the individual’s life will shed light on the reasons why some households are not as poor as others and how some have escaped poverty. Through detecting the real causes behind the participation of women in the labor market, this study contributes a different dimension to the field of poverty research and poverty reduction which may be a reference for other studies. The study results will give a new story about how poverty is created and how it is overcome in practice.
This topic is one of the important parts of national development strategies in every country. It is not only the responsibility of government but also a significant issue in the policy decisions of government. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. The scope and the purpose of the study The research is written as a case study so that all findings are just relevant to the context of the study location.
More generalizable findings must await large-scale, national research on poverty dynamics. The contribution of this study is to investigate the dynamic processes of poverty reduction in one location. The findings contribute to poverty knowledge in an ethinic minority community. In order to understand poverty theories and to place these theories in context, the study will consist of an in-depth case study of one location in which poverty is a persistent problem.
This study focuses on how women can earn a stable income and help their families escape poverty. A lack of information in quantitative studies and the absence of information on migrants are obstacles to understanding poverty and poverty escapes in rural areas in Vietnam. The study will tell an interesting story about a boundary village where many Rhade have lived for a long time. This story will shed light on some factors affecting employment that might be not the same as in other places.
For this purpose and context, the scope of this study will focus on a village which supplies a case study to implement the purpose of the research. Research questions of the study The study will attempt to answer three main research questions: Question 1: Why do some women get better jobs than others? Question 2: Why are some women more vulnerable to falling into poverty than others? Question 3: What is the importance of jobs to poverty escapes? 1. The structure of the study The study consists of five chapters. Following this introduction, the rest of the study is structured as follows.
Chapter 2 is devoted to the literature review in order to provide the analytical framework for the thesis. It presents concepts, discusses the theoretical background, and then lays out a framework for studying the reasons why some women get better jobs than others. Chapter 2 reviews empirical studies concerning poverty among women, poverty in ethnic minority communities and employment which is tested in the thesis on a group of women. Chapter 3 decribes the data, sets out the study TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 4 methodology, and discusses the implementation of the survey.
Chapter 4 presents the results from KrongPa village, the location that is the subject of the case study. Chapter 5 concludes with a summary of main findings and policy recommendations. It also includes some remarks on the limitations of the study. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 5 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.
Concepts There are two different kinds of poverty in this study. The poverty in statistical reports from government is defined as the national poverty definition. Another term of poverty which is used to implement this study is defined in terms of these elements: “ Villagers in this region, men as well as women, deem themselves (and others) poor when their households do not have enough to eat or decent clothes to wear, when they accumulate more debt without being able to repay installments due on past debts, and when they cannot afford to send their children to school. They work hard to achieve at least this bare minimum for their households.” Krishna, Anirudh (2004), “Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor: Who Gains, Who Loses, and Why”, World Development, Vol.
123 The official poverty line is VND 400,000 per month in the rural mountains and island regions (Decision No.