UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M. IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS IMPACT OF REMITTANCES ON THE HOUSEHOLD’S EXPENDITURE STRUCTURE IN VIETNAM BY LE THI NHU AN MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER, 2015 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M. IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS IMPACT OF REMITTANCES ON THE HOUSEHOLD’S EXPENDITURE STRUCTURE IN VIETNAM A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By LE THI NHU AN Academic Supervisor: Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Thuy HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER, 2015 ABSTRACT Since the Vietnamese economic reform called “Doi Moi” in 1986, Vietnam has witnessed a blooming in economy as well as the huge remittances flow from the internal and external migrants.
Many researches choose the remittances behavior for their study. Learning from the way people send back their income and the way people in the homeland use this source of financial support is not only support the valuable theory about remittances, but also bring out a practical experiment for one of the developing economy, Vietnam. Using the VHLSS 2012 data, this study explore the relationship between remittances and the six categories of household expenditure. These categories are food product, non-food (consider for the consumer goods), medical services, education payment, housing facilities payment, durable goods.
The method using is Tobit regression for the education factor, and OLS for the other. Our results show that overall, remittances have statistically significantly impact for food, housing, durable and the medical expenditure. Meanwhile, consumption of remittance recipient households is not different from non-recipient households. 1 TABLE OF CONTENT CHAPER 1: INTRODUCTION ------------------------------------------- Page 4 1.1 The problem statement -------------------------------------------------------------- Page 4 1.2 Research objective -------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 6 1.3 Thesis structure------------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 7 1.4 Scope of supply ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 7 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW -------------------------------- Page 8 2.1 Household utility and expenditure theory ----------------------------------------- Page 8 2.2 Review of empirical studies -------------------------------------------------------- Page 10 - International studies --------------------------------------------------------------- Page 10 - Related studies in Vietnam ------------------------------------------------------- Page 14 CHAPTER 3: PATTERNS OF MIGRATION AND REMITTANCE FLOWS IN VIETNAM --------------------------------------------------- Page 16 3.1 Overview of Vietnamese remittances --------------------------------------------- Page 16 3.2 International remittances ----------------------------------------------------------- Page 16 3.3 Internal remittances ----------------------------------------------------------------- Page 18 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY--------------------- Page 22 4.1 Analytical framework --------------------------------------------------------------- Page 22 4.2 Econometric model ------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 23 4.3 Description of variables ------------------------------------------------------------ Page 24 4.4 Data sources -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 26 CHAPTER 5: EMPIRICAL RESULTS ------------------------------- Page 29 5.1 Statistical result from VHLSS data ----------------------------------------------- Page 29 5.2 Estimation results -------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 37 5.3 Interpretation of the results.
-------------------------------------------------------- Page 39 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION & POLICIES IMPLICATIONS - Page 41 2 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES 1. List of figures Figure 1: Top ten remittances countries ------------------------------------------ Page 18 2. List of tables: Table 1: Possible Positive and Negative Impacts of Remittances ------------- Page 11 Table 2: Ratio of immigration and migration in 1999 and 2009 -------------- Page 20 Table 3: Remittances and household expenditure ------------------------------- Page 22 Table 4: Details of dependent variables ------------------------------------------ Page 29 Table 5: Dependent variables ------------------------------------------------------ Page 30 Table 6: Independent variables ---------------------------------------------------- Page 31 Table 7: Number of recipient household ------------------------------------------ Page 33 Table 8: Sources of remittances ---------------------------------------------------- Page 33 Table 9: Non-parametric analysis -------------------------------------------------- Page 34 Table 10: Impact of some household characteristic on the total expenditure ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 35 Table 11: Preliminary regression model of remittances impact on dependent variables ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 37 Table 12: Regression results -------------------------------------------------------- Page 38 3 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 THE PROBLEM STATEMENT Nowadays, with the explosion of economic transaction between country and region, the numbers of people go to another place different from the birthplace for earning the living has been dramatically increased. This migration human resource flow certainly leads to one of the most important monetary flow- remittance.