Measurement of poverty in multiple dimensions: the case of Vietnam

The notion of multidimensional poverty is widely conceded and is increasingly engaging the interest of researchers and scholars, however, it is rarely used in explorations of the situation of Vietnam. Using national data from 9399 households in the 2012 Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey, we apply the integrated fuzzy relative approach for poverty, a completely novel methodology in this context, to explore the current patterns of multidimensional deprivation in Vietnam at different levels, including the incidence and intensity of the poverty of migrants’ households. Our findings reveal that these households are most deprived in the basic services dimension, while in the health dimension they are least deprived. A stark disparity exists between ethnic, and educational groups, and that female-headed households are less deprived, except in the durable asset dimension. The results further reveal that the situation of migrants’ households is better than that of their non-migrant counterparts in almost all non-monetary dimensions, but not in the monetary dimension. However, migration of family members leads to improvement in the income of the left behind families in the least developed areas in Vietnam. Our observation exposes differences in the complex nature of poverty in regional Vietnam from that of the current headcount measure of absolute income poverty.