UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE IMPACTS OF HOUSEHOLD’s CHARACTERISTICS ON THE OCCUPATION OPPORTUNITIES OF WOMEN: THE CASE STUDY IN VIETNAM BY NGUYỄN THỊ TỐ VY MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, JANUARY 2018 CERTIFICATION “I certify the content of this thesis has not already been submitted for any degree and is not being currently submitted for any other degrees. I certify that, to be the best of my knowledge, any help received in preparing this thesis and all source used, have been acknowledged in this thesis.” Signature Nguyễn Thị Tố Vy Date 18th January 2018 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to send my thanks to my lecturers in Vietnam Netherlands Program who helped me to achieve the knowledge through interesting lessons, usefull assignment, utility seminars and new information during my master studying. I greatly express my special thanks to Dr. Truong Dang Thuy for all his academic recommendations and supports through finishing thesis process.
I am gratefull to all the staffs in the Vietnam Netherland Office have delivered me books and necessary documents during the studying process. My thanks are also extended to all my classmaters, who have sympathised and shared learning experiences with me through over last two years. I deepest thank to all of my family’s members who have congrated and given me a lot of supports during last three years. They have transfered my strong motivation into the practical actions to help me finish this course on time.
ii ABBREVIATIONS VHLSS ………………………………………………….Viet Nam Households Living Standard Survey VND …………………………………………………………………………………………………….Viet Nam Dong GSO ……………………………………………………………………….General Statistic Office of Vietnam BLS …………………………………………………………United State Bureau of Labour Statistics CPS………………………………. The March Current Population Survey of United States SOEP ………………………………………………………. German Socio-Economic Panel GSO obs …………………………………………………………….women employment status FBS ………………………………………………………………Pakistan Bureaus of Statistics House VWU ………………………………………………………………………………. Vietnam Women Union iii ABSTRACT This study purposes to examine the factors affect Vietnamese women’s decision to participate in workforce and labor supply.
Our samples were taken from dataset of Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey in 2014 including women from 15 to 55 years of age in 63 provinces and cities in Vietnam. We found that the married women’s employment was strong determined by their individual’s characteristics (age, head of household, particular by Vietnam Women Union). The age and head of household have strong negative impacts on the married women’s occupation opportunity. The Women Union has strongly positive impacts on both married women and female group.
We also found that household size does not have any impact on female group. Inversely, it has strong positive impacted on married women group. The bigger household size increasing the opportunities of married women’s labor force participation, while the higher number of children reducing this opportunities down. The rural married women have much more occupation opportunities than urban married women’s but the urban married women have to work with longer working hours.
Although increasing husband’s wage was driven the labor force participation of married women down but it can not support to improve the working hours of this women group. The married woman’s occupation opportunity was not impacted by her and her husband’s education levels. The phenomenon as married women more likely participate in to the economic activities than the unmarried women was also determined in our study. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATION.
iv LIST OF TABLES. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Scope of the study .3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND. Literature review of labour supply models.
Review of empirical studies .8 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DATA. Collective household labor frame-work. 25 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH RESULTS. Results of Probit, Tobit regression, marginal effects for the full sample.
Results of Probit, Tobit Regression, marginal effects for the sub-sample of married women 63 4. 69 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS. Limitations of the study. 93 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Definitions Variables Used in the Model.
21 Table 2: Summary statistics for the full sample (N = 9,171). 32 Table 3: Summary statistics for the sample of married women (N = 4,077). 35 Table 4: Employment status. 38 Table 5: Employment status and household size.
40 Table 6: Employment status and number of children. 42 Table 7: Employment status and number of old persons. 43 Table 8: Results of Probit and Tobit regression with the full sample (N = 9,171). 60 Table 9: Results of Probit and Tobit Regressions for Married Women (N = 4,077).
66 Table 10: Compare Strongest Impacts on Women’s Employment status. 77 vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Problem statement In the past, Vietnamese family size appeared to be much bigger than that in the present. During the decades of 1980s, 1990s, one could easily find a family with 8-10 members or even 12-14 members.
Nowadays, there are only 3-4 members in an urban family as also in a rural one. The over 6 members of households are rarely in the modern Vietnamese society. In generally, the traditional extended families were really substituted by popular nuclear families. The previous house-wife women in these traditional families were becoming workers, officials, teachers, engineers, business or even leaders, government official.
However, according to the results of almost labor force investigations in Vietnam and all over the world, the participation rate of female is always lower than that of male in the labor market. In the investigation of Vietnam General Statistics Office (GSO) in 2014, the participation rate of male of labor force is 82.5% and participation rate of female of labor force is 73. While the ratio of unemployment women is always higher than the ratio of unemployment man: the ratio of youth female unemployment is 7.15% while the ratio of youth male unemployment is 5. These show that the participative opportunities of women in labor force market should be paid attention by government, policy makers, offices and everyone.
The results from the study of Rahmah Ismail & Noorasiah Sulaiman (2014) showed that even though the entrance of female labor in almost economic sectors is increasing over years, their participation rate is still low in Malaysia. It is the similar situation in Sudan (Julliffe, 2004) in which presented female career is less than 50 % out of the total career in these countries. The age of married women and the number of children are deeply influenced on the supply of female labor. As the rate of entrance of women labor attributed to several reasons, an investigation of 1 determinants of female labor supply is really responsible, as they are important for policy design and the further benefits of females.
In several researches as Francois (1998), Basu (2006), Atal (2010) have investigated the relationships between the supply of female labor and the process of decision by the household. They found that the participation of female in labor workforce is decided by the household and the distribution of power is formed endogenously among the household members. The occupation opportunity of women indicates that the contribution of women income to their families will determine the distribution of her power. This will increase in the household when she could receive more benefits.
It means that she has more opportunities to get another job but not house-working only. Thus, the decision of woman whether work outside or stay at home as a house-wife is determined by the collective utility of the household and the market wage is as an economic incentive only. Moreover, participation of females to the labor force market is always dependent on several factors. Research objectives The aim of this research is to examine the impacts of household characteristics, especially household size on married women’s occupation opportunities in Vietnam.
Model of Probit, OLS and Tobit are used to analyze the decision to participate in workforce and the number of working hours of women. Several variables are used as independent variables. Household size is defined as the number of members in the household in our study. Beside, the other characteristics of the household and woman are also analyzed, including: household’s ownership asset, household’s total income, number of children in household, household poverty status, household locality status or woman’s marriage status, woman’s education, woman’s age, her husband’s wage, her husband’s education, her husband’s employment status and other variables.
This study attempts to answer one main reseach question as follow: 2 Which factors affect Vietnamese women’s decision to participate in the workforce and labor supply? 1. Scope of the study We attempt to examine the employment of female and married women in 63 provinces in Vietnam and base on the dataset taken from Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) in 2014. Subjects of the study include women from 15 to 55 years of age. Research structure The proceeds of this study as follows: Chapter one is the introduction.
Chapter two presents the literature review and empirical theories. Chapter three introduces the collected dataset and the methodology we used to analyze the data in this study. Chapter four presents the estimation results and discussions parts. The conclusion, policy implication and limitation are presented in the section five.
3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND EMPIRICAL STUDIES 2. Literature review of labour supply models The labour force is defined by US Beureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) as: “All persons classified as employed or unemployed. Employed persons are persons aged 16 years or older, who work for an employer or are self-employed, and excludes people who work as volunteers and people engaged in self-service/homemaking. Unemployed persons are those jobless persons who are aged 16 years or older, were available for job in last four weeks, and had made specific efforts to find a job at any time during that period”.
This definition can show clearly the total of labour force of an economy. However, it does not show how to exclude the persons who are labour force participation but they do not work actually at the investigated period because of their special characteristics as: students, retires, the disabled, and the voluntarily idle as well as it has no limited ceiling age. According to the definition of macroeconomists, the labor force is defined as the people who are employed and unemployed called working-age persons. The working-age persons are defined as people between the ages of 16-64 but not include the students, retirees, the disabled people, house-workers and the voluntarily idle.
The advantage of this definition is it has the limited ceiling age. Although, it can also category between employed, unemployed and students, retirees, the disabled people, the voluntarily idle, but it does not include the self-service/homemakers in the labor force. Actually, students, retires, the disabled people, voluntarily idle, the self-services and homemakers also join economic activities. They directly or/and indirectly make the goods, materials or services for the economy and get back income from their works.
4 There are some disadvantages among the definitions here. Both of them seem difficultly examine or determinate works of house workers, homemakers, the full- time or/and part-time jobs of students, retires as well as the disabled in Vietnam. According to Labor Law of Vietnam No. 10/2012/QH13, the working-age persons who are aged 15 or older, for men aged 15-60 and for women aged 15-55.
Therefore, in this study, we concern about the female and married women who participate in Vietnam labor market aged 15-55 years. There are three labour supply theoretical models in the traditional microeconomic. They are individual labour supply model; household model included the unitary household labour model and collective household labour model. Individual labour supply model The individual labour supply model is a basic model follows the neoclassical theory.
It is known as the basic model of a trade-off of a consumer between consuming more goods or more leisure.