Understanding ethnic minority poverty in Vietnam

Understanding ethnic minority poverty in Vietnam

Country Social Analysis StudyThe World Bank

April 2007

EM Poverty in VN

• Vietnam has made great strides in reducing the poverty rate, from nearly 60% of the population in 1993 to less than 20% in 2004.

• However, despite overall gains, ethnic minorities have experienced lower rates of poverty reduction than the general population.

• In 2004, ethnic minorities accounted for only 12.6% of the total population, but they made up 39.3% of the poor population (VHLSS 2004).

Province Poverty rate, 2004 % EM, 1999

Lai Chau (NM) 74% 83%

Dien Bien (NM) 66% *

Ha Giang (NM) 59% 88%

Son La (NM) 56% 83%

Lao Cai (NM) 54% 67%

Hoa Binh (NM) 54% 72%

Bac Can (NM) 50% 87%

Gia Lai (CH) 46% 44%

Kon Tum (CH) 42% 54%

The poorest provinces are in the Northern Mountains (NM) and the Central Highlands

(CH) - which have the highest EM populations

Source: Turk 2006 presentation using VHLSS 2004; 1999 Population and Housing Census

* Lai Chau and Dien Bien were previously one province, Lai Chau, at the time of the 1999 Population and Housing Census. More up to date figures are not yet available until the next decennial census.

Poverty and Ethnicityare Spatially Linked

Ethnic minority groups are concentrated in geographical regions with high rates of poverty

Source: WRI 2002

But within these poor regions, Kinh have experienced greater poverty reduction

Poverty trends of Kinh and non-Kinh in the North West and Central Highlands

0

20

40

60

80

100

1993 1998 2002 2004

Po

ve

rty

ra

te (

%)

Kinh, North West Mtns

Kinh, Central Highlands

Ethnic minorities, North West Mtns

Ethnic minorities, Central Highlands

Source: Swinkels and Turk 2006

Kinh do better than EMs in “lagging regions”CSA data supports previous PREM research (Swinkels and Turk

2004, p.7) showing that poverty reductions within “lagging regions” have been greater for Kinh than for EMs.

ETHNICITY

INCOME per HH Kinh Pa Co Mnong Van Kieu Hmong Tay Other EMs

0 – 3,200,000 VND (0- $192 US)

10.0% 53.5% 13.0% 24.4% 22.0% 18.2% 12.2%

3,200,001 – 6,300,000 VND ($193 - 378 US)

10.0% 15.5% 45.7% 26.7% 22.0% 36.4% 24.3%

6,300,001 – 12,100,000($378 - 727 US)

26.7% 18.3% 19.6% 35.6% 29.3% 13.6% 25%

12,100,001 – 61,700,000 ($728 - 3,705 US)

53.3% 12.7% 21.7% 13.3% 26.8% 31.8% 25.3%

Source: CSA survey 2006 (Chi-sq.=.00, R=.000)

Ethnicity and Poverty in “lagging regions”Most ethnic minorities in CSA study sites have significantly fewer high value assets than Kinh.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Kinh Tay Hmong Mnong Paco VanKieu

motorbike

water pump

refrigerator

Source: CSA survey 2006

The Ethnic Dimensions to Poverty Persists

• PREM research shows that “those who are able to prosper in the more remote parts of the country are likely to be from the Kinh majority population rather than from an ethnic minority group.” (Swinkels and Turk 2004, p. 1)

• Analysis of the 1993 and 1998 VHLSS shows “even if minority households had the same endowments as Kinh households, this would close no more than a third of the gap in living standards” (Baulch et al 2002, p. 17)

• However, these previous studies, based primarily on VHLSS data, have not been able to fully explain the main factors as to WHY ethnic minorities remain poorer than Kinh.

Previous Explanations

Previous explanations (Baulch et al 2002, p. 11) have suggested two possibilities:

1) People may be poor because they lack endowments, such as land, physical capital and human capital.

2) People may be poor because their knowledge, customs or culture result in lower returns on endowments.

Endowments vs. Returns

• Van de Walle and Gunewardena (2001) find that about half of the difference in expenditure per capita between Kinh and EMs is due to differences in endowments, with the remainder likely caused by lower returns on endowments among EMs.

• They conclude that “there are systematic differences not attributable to where you live… if we look solely at communes where both groups live, [endowments] no longer account for any of the difference in average consumption. These results lead us to conclude that fundamentally different models generate incomes for the majority and minority groups.” (p. 204)

Implications of previous research

• Even if ethnic minority groups had the same endowments as Kinh, significant poverty differences would still exist.

• There is an ethnic dimension to poverty that goes beyond a “lagging regions” explanation.

• Our CSA analysis set out to understand how the cultural differences between Kinh and EMs explain higher rates of EM poverty.

CSA Approach and Methodology

• Survey team did fieldwork in three provinces representative of the three main regions where EMs live: the Northern Mountains (Ha Giang Province), the Central Highlands (Dak Lak Province), and the North Central Coast (Quang Tri Province).

• The CSA combined detailed qualitative work in villages (focus groups, interviews, oral histories, mapping, PRA), with a quantitative survey (n=364), spread equally among the provinces.

• We also interviewed and discussed EM policy issues with local, commune, district, provincial and national policy makers, and reviewed secondary and policy literature.

• A gender survey was also carried out with 180 women of various ethnicities.

CSA Findings: How ‘Difference’ becomes Disadvantage

• CSA analysis identifies six main interlocking factors where ‘differences’ between ethnic groups result in clear disadvantages for ethnic minorities, with consequent livelihood impacts:

- less access to education - more limited mobility- unfavorable credit options - poorer returns from markets - less productive lands - stereotyping / misconceptions

• It appears that these factors strongly influence livelihood outcomes, preventing ethnic minorities from achieving greater economic progress.

The Pillars of the ‘Cycle of Disadvantage’ for EMs

Lower Education

Less Mobility

Less Access to Formal Credit

Less productive landholdings

Stereotyping and misconceptions

Lower Livelihood Outcomes

Lower marketaccess / lowerincome from goodssold

Pillar One: Education

ETHNICITY

EDUCATION Kinh majority Ethnic minorities

None 6 % 30.6 %

Primary (Grade 1 – 5 ) 16 % 44.6 %

Lower (Grade 6 – 9) 52 % 22 %

Secondary (Grade 10-12)

26 % 2.9 %

Source: CSA survey 2006. (Chi-sq=.000, R=.000)

There are significant differences in level of education between Kinh and EM respondents, with Kinh attaining more education across the board

Educational attainment by region

Level of education

Dak Lak Ha Giang Quang Tri

Kinh EMs Kinh EMs Kinh EMs

None 4% 25% 10% 26% 0% 39%

Primary 8% 48% 24% 40% 25% 46%

Lower 48% 24% 62% 29% 25% 14%

Secondary 40% 3% 5% 4% 50% 2%

Source: CSA survey 2006. For comparison purposes – low cell counts make significance testing inaccurate (Chi-sq and R all below .03)

The significant difference between EMs and Kinh in educational attainment remains when we control for regional variations

Educational difference between all ethnic groups

Level of education

Kinh Tay Dao Hmong Thai Mnong Ede Bo Y Pa Co

Van

Kieu

Nung

None 6% 0% 44% 46% 0% 30% 29% 0% 38% 40% 13%

Primary 16% 32% 56% 34% 38% 48% 50% 39% 41% 53% 56%

Lower 52% 59% 0% 15% 50% 17% 21% 62% 20% 4% 31%

Secondary 26% 9% 0% 5% 13% 4% 0% 0% 1% 2% 0%

Source: CSA survey 2006. For comparison purposes – low cell counts make significance testing inaccurate (Chi-sq=.000, R=.061)

Kinh are the only ethnic group with a sizable percentage (26%) of respondents having attained a high school education

Ethnicity and educational outcomes are linked

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

% children startingschool late

% childrendropping out of

school

Ethnic Minorities

Kinh

A much higher percentage of ethnic minority children start school late or drop out of school before completion.

Source: CSA survey 2006

Why do EMs start school late and drop out early?

• The most common reason for starting school late mentioned by EMs surveyed was because children were not ready for school (26.9%). Lack of Vietnamese language skills in young children and lack of pre-school preparation were identified in the qualitative research as factors.

• The most common reason for dropping out was because the household lacked money for school fees (39.8%).

• Qualitative research suggests that EM students who start late are also more likely to drop out early due to embarrassment at being older and a general lack of confidence.

Role of parents in education• It appears NOT to be true that EM parents don’t understand the value

of education: nearly all households reported that pulling children out of school is their very last option when faced with food and cash scarcity.

• Furthermore, nearly 90% of Tay, Dao and Thai HHs reported attending parent meetings or the PTA. Tay, Dao and Thai parents were also more likely to speak Kinh and have higher educational attainment themselves.

• Other EMs reported less frequent parent involvement, such as the Hmong (45%), Mnong (49%) and Van Kieu (55%). This was attributed to the lack of Kinh language skills among these parents.

• Thus the educational attainment of parents has an impact on their ability to be involved in their children’s education, with potential effects on the success of their children in school.

• This may indicate the need to especially target school and education efforts on those ethnic minorities who are less likely to use Vietnamese at home and who have higher rates of adult illiteracy.

Implications of Pillar One• Education has a significant impact on a household’s

economic status. Less education means higher rates of illiteracy among EMs, resulting in less opportunity, less likelihood of off-farm employment, and less access to a multitude of government and other services.

• A VASS study based on VHLSS data from 1993-2004 finds that the difference made by higher levels of education are statistically significant: having a vocational training certificate accounts for over one million VND (US$60) additional income, and a degree of higher education accounts for over two and half million VND (US$150). (VASS 2006 p. 26)

• Yet in 2005, less than 2,000 EM nation-wide were admitted to tertiary education, according to the Ministry of Education.

Pillar Two: Mobility and Migration

Members of HH have been to:

Ethnic minorities

Kinh majority

Commune center

84.7 % 98 %

Province city/town

54.1% 94 %

Other provinces in region

17.6 % 66 %

EMs are less likely to be mobile. They visit areas outside their village less often than Kinh and travel shorter distances

Source: CSA survey 2006.

The Advantages of Mobility

How do ethnic minorities view their own lack of mobility?

In one multi-ethnic village in Dak Lak composed of indigenous Ede, migrant Nung and migrant Kinh, PRA revealed that Ede believed the Nung were more ‘organized, well planned and decisive’, having benefited from seeing agriculture in other areas before they came to Dak Lak. The Ede also believed the Kinh households had a ‘wider social network’, leading the Kinh to be more proactive in networking with local authorities, and local and regional traders, as well as having contacts with Kinh in other regions to learn from.

Ethnicity and Migration

0

10

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30

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50

60

70

80

% born outside of village

Kinh

Ethnic minorities

Kinh are more likely to have migrated

Ethnicity and Migration: Differences between Kinh and EMs

• Kinh migrants are more likely to have come farther distances in their migration: Kinh in the uplands have come from many areas, including as far away as the Red River Delta and the South Central Coast.

• While 35% of minority HHs reported they had a household head or spouse born in another village, minority ‘migrants’ are more likely to have simply moved within the local commune or district.

• This is particularly true given policies since 1968 to ‘sedentarize’ ethnic minorities by moving them to state-built villages; minorities reporting that they live outside their home village have often simply been moved by these programs a few kms away from their original villages.

Some Minorities Have Migrated Longer Distances…

• Many minorities in Dak Lak and Quang Tri had to temporarily migrate from their birth village due to the disruptions of the Vietnam War (1961-1975). Many minorities in Ha Giang had to temporarily migrate during the Vietnam-China border war of 1979.

• The only long-distance migration among minorities comes from some EM groups (Thai, Dao, Hmong, Tay, Nung) in the Northern Mountains who migrated in the 1990s to the Central Highlands to seek larger plots of land. Many of these EMs traveled in groups from their home villages.

• The Pa Co of Quang Tri also report inter-provincial migration, but only with the neighboring province of Thua Thien Hue, because of cultural preferences for Pa Co spouses from outside the home district.

Access to land after migration is more favorable to Kinh

Method for obtaining land

Ethnic minorities Kinh majority

Buy 14.4 % 62.2 %

Rent 1.7 % 2.7 %

Clear the land 66.9 % 10.8 %

Gov’t allocation 5.1 % 21.6 %

Other 11.9 % 2.7 %

Source: CSA survey 2006. (Chi-sq.=.000, R=.000)

Most ethnic minorities clear their own land after migration, while the majority of Kinh have money to buy their land (which as a result is

often better quality land). Kinh are also more likely to receive government land allocations after migrating.

Ethnicity and Sponsored Migration

Since 2003, Quang Tri province has encouraged Kinh migrants to come to the border areas of the province, arguing that the migration will help minorities “progress faster as they will be near Kinh”, in the words of a district official. This program promised the Kinh who moved upland many preferable polices to increase production. In the first year of the program, each Kinh household that moved was promised 3 ha of land, 3 million VND in cash, 10 million in construction materials for a house, 5 million VND in food equivalent, and 500,000 VND in moving/travel expenses. To encourage the Kinh migrants to take advantage of their new lands, the state bank has recently started a program to provide credit for the planting of rubber. Those who plant rubber can get up to 24.5 million VND in loans. By comparison, investment in ethnic minority sedentarization schemes has usually been capped at 1 million VND in government investment per household (IEMA 2005).This provincial policy focus on investing in Kinh migrants, rather than directly investing in EM communities, may have impacts on the different poverty rates found in the provinces.

An example of how official migration programs may favor Kinh at the expense of EMs

Implications of Pillar Two• Much poverty investment has focused on infrastructure (roads) to

increase access and mobility for remote areas. However, the CSA research suggests that mobility is more than access to roads.

• While roads are important, in order to take the most advantage of roads, EMs need to have places to go (markets, schools, training centers), people to talk to (contacts) and relationships/networks.

• Without Vnese language skills, without contacts outside the village, and without wider networks of people to work with/help them outside their commune, EMs cannot take advantage of roads and infrastructure to increase mobility and subsequently improve livelihoods in the same way that Kinh can.

• Analysis of VHLSS data has shown that, given the above disadvantages, rural roads have mainly benefited Kinh and Chinese –not other ethnic minority groups. (VASS 2006 p. 27-28)

Pillar Three: Access to Credit

Main problem with production

Ethnic minorities

Kinh majority

Lack of capital 81 % 52 %

Lack of experience with new techniques

36% 8%

Lack of extension services

27% 8%

Ethnic minorities, at much higher rates than Kinh, report a lack of credit as their biggest production constraint.

Ethnicity and access to credit

Amount borrowed Ethnic minorities Kinh majority

None 32.1% 20%

1 – 1,999,999(0 - US$120)

11.9% 6%

2,000,000 – 4,999,999 (US$121 - 300)

22.1% 12%

5,000,000 or more (US$301 or more)

34% 62%

Ethnic minorities have access to smaller loans than Kinh

Source: CSA survey 2006. (Chi-square = .002, R = .002)

Cash crops, ethnicity and access to credit

Amount borrowed Ethnic minorities in Dak Lak

Kinh majority in Dak Lak

None 21.2% 8%

1 – 1,999,999 VND

(US$1-120)

15.2% 4%

2,000,000 – 4,999,999 VND

(US$121-300)

14.1% 8%

5,000,000 VND or more

(US$301 or more)

49.5% 80%

In CSA data, the difference in loan size is most pronounced in Dak Lak, a region where both majority and minority groups are involved in coffee production, which

requires significant capital. Significantly higher percentages of Kinh in Dak Lak get the larger loans needed for coffee farms.

Source: CSA survey 2006 (Chi-square = .052, R = .011)

EM lack of formal credit has a high cost

The credit situation is particularly acute in the Central Highlands, which are more cash crop oriented than other minority regions. There, the lack of access to larger loans has driven many Ede to take their coffee production loans from the informal system (private traders and agricultural supply stores) which can provide much larger loans much faster and with much less paperwork (one day versus several months for the formal system). These loans are highly risky, however, as they involve very high rates of interest and short term loan periods which cannot usually be extended without potentially forfeiting the collateral put up for the loan (usually a land tenure certificate). When coffee prices dropped in the year 2000, many Ede with these short term private loans could not pay. In many cases the traders took the Ede land which had been put up as collateral, or Ede had to sell other lands to pay the debts, leading to some increasing landlessness among Ede. The Kinh, who also had to face the same drop in coffee prices, appear to have been more likely to have had their loans from the former bank sector, and provincial and central policies were adopted to let banks extend loan terms during the coffee crisis with the interest on these extended loans being subsidized by the government. Thus there was less land forfeiture among those with formal loans during this period.

Comparing Ede and Kinh coffee farmers in Dak Lak

EMs lack access to the banks that issue larger loans

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70

Kinh Tay Mong Mnong Paco VanKieu

% households thatborrowed from VBSP

% households thatborrowed fromVBARD

More EMs borrow from the Bank for Social Policies (VBSP), which has a smaller maximum loan size (5 million VND) than the Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (VBARD) or other banks (which regularly lend 10 million VND or more).

Why can’t some EMs access the formal credit system?

• Of EM households which had never obtained bank loans, half mentioned that the reason was they did not have collateral. EMs without land tenure certificates have trouble accessing loans (IEMA 2006).

• VBSP Bank credit officers usually set a fixed number of eligible clients for each village, regardless of eligibility or need. This is a result of the limited funds of VBSP’s local branches, as they are completely dependent on allocations from central levels.

• Targeting to the poor has been hampered by the inclusion of the non-poor in credit. VBSP is supposed to target credit to those on village lists of poor households, but an IEMA study found VBSP providing credit to the non-poor in all study villages. In this study of EM access to credit in the northern mountains, 31% of VBSP loans went to high income groups while only 11% went to the poorest (IEMA 2006).

Ethnicity and buying on credit in the informal sector

Did household purchase on credit in last year?


Yes 31.8% 64%

No 68.2% 36%

Fewer ethnic minority households have access to buying on credit from the informal sector (private traders,

moneylenders) for household purchases

Source: CSA survey 2006. (chi-square = .000, R = .000)

Ethnicity affects interest rates in the informal sector

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5

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15

20

25

30

35

40

% who pay interest for purchasing oncredit

Kinh

Ethnic minorities

Ethnic minorities may get less informal credit than Kinh, but they are far more likely to have to pay interest when

they purchase on credit

Source: CSA survey 2006 (Chi-square = .007, R = .007)

Purchasing on Credit

Through PRA with Kinh moneylenders, we found that informal lending can lead to a cycle of indebtedness and dependency. For example, Kinh traders in one commune in Dak Lak lend money to Mnong prior to the corn planting season when cash is needed to buy inputs. The Kinh will lend cash but then convert the amount to be repaid to corn equivalence. For example, if the price of the previous year’s crop was VND700,000/ton, the Kinh traders lend Mnong HHs VND700,000 (US $42) then collect one ton of maize from them after the harvest. The traders never accept repayment in cash as they make their money on the rise in prices from season to season. For example, last year the price was 700,000/ton but in 2006 it was 1,400,000/ton (US $84). So with repayment in maize the traders get 100 percent interest in the course of 6 months, but if they worked with cash they could only get 30 – 35% interest (after 6 months). In 2005’s corn season, in one village alone, 56 households borrowed from a Mrs. S (a Kinh trader from another village) and repaid in 84 tons of maize (equivalent to VND109,200,000 – US $6,558). If half of this is interest profit, her yearly income from lending alone is over 50 million VND (US $3,279).

The cycle of indebtedness facing many EMs

Implications of Pillar Three

• The lack of access to affordable credit has serious implications for EMs ability to expand agricultural production, diversify livelihoods, and invest in new activities like trade or services.

• Results of a household survey among EMs in 2005 showed that credit and savings schemes had positive impacts on income of ethnic minority households when they could access them. 78% of the surveyed households that borrowed money from VBSP and VBARD said the credit had had a positive impact on their household (IEMA 2006).

Pillar Four: Poorer, Less Productive Landholdings

• According to recent VHLSS (2002/2004), overall size of landholdings are often higher for EMs than for the for Kinh. However, while these landholdings may be larger overall, they are often less productive than Kinh lands. In the CSA survey EMs reported smaller landholdings of the most profitable and productive land types than Kinh.

• CSA data shows significant differences between ethnic minority groups and Kinh in the amount of wetland, industrial crop land, and upland areas cultivated.

Irrigated rice land holdings are small across the board

Irrigated rice land cultivated in m3


None 35 % 56 %

1 – 1000 m3

(0.0001 - 0.10 ha)

24 % 14 %

1001 – 2000 m3

(0.11 ha - 0.2 ha)

17 % 14 %

2001 – 3000 m3

(0.21 - 0.3 ha)

9 % 10 %

3001 or more m3

(0.3 ha or more)

15 % 6 %

Somewhat surprisingly, the majority of Kinh respondents reported that they were not cultivating irrigated rice land


Industrial crop area is smaller for EMs

Industrial crop area in m3


None 87 % 68 %

1 – 5000 m3

(0.0001-0.5 ha)

9 % 14 %

5001 – 10000 m3

(0.51 - 1 ha)

4 % 2 %

10001 or more m3

(more than 1 ha)

1 % 16 %

The majority of EMs respondents do not cultivate industrial crops, and those who do concentrate on smaller

plots than Kinh respondents


Upland swidden fields are very important to EMs

Upland swidden cultivated


None 19 % 52 %

1 – 3000 m3

(0.0001 - 0.3 ha)

29 % 32 %

3001 m3 or more

(more than 0.3 ha)

52 % 16 %


Upland swidden fields are essential to EM production, with over half of HHs cultivating over a third of a hectare.

Implications of Land Use Patterns for EM Policies

• Simplistic assumptions that Kinh know wet rice agriculture and must have brought it with them when they migrated to the uplands, explaining their higher success rates in economic development in minority areas, are not borne out by the CSA data. We see that more than half of Kinh in minority areas don’t bother to cultivate wet rice. These Kinh focus on high value industrial and fruit trees, and trading and other services.

• Yet it is common to see Vietnamese state policy interventions focused on wet rice development in minority areas, the assumption being that wet rice can be intensified and more productive than non-irrigated swidden fields.

• CSA data indicates that investment in extension and infrastructure for wet rice may be misguided, given rice’s low productivity and low profits in many upland areas. Even most Kinh are not focusing on wet rice, so why should minorities?

Upland Lands: The need for agricultural services

• Upland swidden fields remain extremely important for most HH - yet the extension services focus mostly on lowland Kinh models of production (wet rice, fruit trees).

• More than half the HH surveyed had never been to an extension training, and the large majority had never seen a production model or used new techniques from extension.

• PRA with those who did go to trainings revealed that the content often concerned irrigated rice, hybrid corn, and fruit trees (only hybrid corn is regularly grown in upland fields). There is also a heavy emphasis on technical advice and subsidies regarding chemical fertilizers and pesticides -- which are not often used on upland fields. For example, in one Ede village where more than 90% of HHs grew coffee and wanted extension on improving coffee yields, the only extension they got was a ‘demonstration model’ of new hybrid wet rice seeds (which failed to grow in the local conditions).

• More research and extension to address the needs of upland field farmers - like terracing, soil erosion protection, intercropping, SALT techniques, and new non-irrigated, drought-resistant crops - were requested by farmers in PRA meetings.

Have sedentarization programs had the intended impact?

• Since 1968, the policy of the Vietnamese government has been to eliminate ‘shifting cultivation’ among ethnic minorities. This policy has been justified with concern over deforestation and the belief that upland swidden fields (fields that are used and fallowed in cycles) are less productive than permanent fields of wet rice and other crops. The sedentarization policies of the GOV have moved hundreds of thousands of EM households into state-built villages or into more lowland areas, and has invested millions of dollars into eliminating the use of swidden fields.

• Yet in our CSA, the importance of swidden to EM livelihoods remains clear. 28% of HH using uplands reported their fields had grown compared with five years ago, while only 17% said it had decreased (the rest stayed the same). Pa Co and Van Kieu were most likely to have expanded swidden fields, due to lack of production from other lands and a reported preference for swidden produce.

• However, there is a worrisome trend that 25% of HHs using swidden fields reported shorter fallow times, while 8% reported longer, and the rest said there was no change.

• These trends confirm the 2005 IEMA study which found that sedentarization programs to halt the use of swidden and upland fields are ineffective and unrealistic, given these fields’ importance to household livelihoods.

Forestry Policies Also Not Effective in Improving EM Livelihoods

• Since 1993, the GOV has had policies in place to transfer land use rights for forestry lands to individual households and away from the state, which previously managed forests in State Forest Enterprises (para-statal logging companies).

• This process of Forest Land Allocation (FLA) can involve essentially permanent and privatized land use rights (Red Books) as well as less secure or long term contracts to manage forestry land. Some FLA comes with payments to the HH to protect the land (usually around 50,000 VND/ha/yr - around US$3) while other forms of FLA involve no financial payments or investments.

• Overall, the goals of FLA were to increase forest cover in the uplands and to assist upland HHs in finding new sources of income from forestry activities (timber, fuelwood, non-timber forest products)

• However, the CSA confirms other recent studies (such as Dinh Duc Thuan 2005) that indicate FLA has had almost no livelihood impact for EMs.

Forestry land and ethnicity

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

% receiving forest land allocation

Tay

Dao

Hmong

Thai

Mnong

Ede

BoY

PaCo

VanKieu

Kinh

Nung

Other

While 26.6% of all respondents received FLA, there are significant differences between allocations to different ethnic groups

Source: CSA survey 2006. (chi-square = .000, R = .000)

Forestry Land and Region• FLA is very skewed regionally. Less than 1% of Dak Lak HHs

had FLA, while 67% of HHs in Ha Giang did. • Furthermore, less than half of all recipients of FLA in the

survey got a Red Book that establishes the most secure tenure claims.

• Evidence from many sources (VHLSS, TECOS, our CSA) indicates that the government (primarily through the State Forest Enterprises) continues to control much of the forest estate in the Central Highlands. More than 45% of Dak Lak’s total land area is still controlled by SFEs and state farms (GSO 2003).

• Less than 2% of the total forest cover of the four provinces of the Central Highlands has been allocated to individual households to use, while the figure is 46% in the Northwest (TECOS 2006).

Forestry land incomes are small and impact few EM HHs

Only 9.4% of those with FLA reported that it contributed to the HHs overall household income and livelihood. Sale of fuelwood accounted for most of this income from FLA

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

% reporting that FLA contributed to production

Tay

Dao

Hmong

BoY

PaCo

VanKieu

Kinh

Nung

Other

Source: CSA survey 2006. (Differences between groups are not significant here: all groups reported low earnings.)

Fundamentally different production models?

% earning income from activityINCOME SOURCE Kinh majority Ethnic minorities

Rice (both irrigated and swidden rice) 36.7 76.3

Maize 26.7 71.3

Cassava 10 36.5

Perennial trees (coffee, tea, fruit, etc)

46.7 17.9

Pigs 66.7 36.6

Wood/timber 3 17.4

Trade 27.3 2.2

Salary/wage labor 9.1 23.9

The differences in all land endowments appear to impact the earning potential of ethnic groups, putting EMs at a disadvantage

Implications of Pillar Four• EMs have less productive lands and smaller landholdings of the

highest value lands for industrial crops. • Swidden lands remain important but due to restrictions on their use

and a lack of attention from extension services they are not as productive as they could be.

• FLA is very regionally skewed, and is practically nonexistent in the Central Highlands.

• As a result, EMs have little chance to benefit financially from forest lands. Unless there is aggressive investment in productive use of FLA lands after allocation, there does not appear to be much livelihood benefit from forests.

• Fundamentally different production models appear between Kinh and EMs, with different crops grown on different lands, and different sources of off-farm income (trading/services for Kinh and often low-value and unstable wage labor for EMs). Policies for agricultural investment should take these differences into account, rather than formulating blanket policies for provinces and regions.

Pillar 5: Lower Market Access• There is a widespread belief among government officials and

others that EMs are poor because they lack familiarity with the market economy and are only concerned with self-sufficiency.

• For example, the VN government’s SEDEMA for 2006-2010 says that in EM areas the “Economy is characterized by predominantly agricultural production and [is] autarky-oriented. Cultivation skills are backward. Market economy is rather passive and underdeveloped” .

• However, the CSA has found that minorities want to be and are engaged in the market - nearly half of all households sold something at a physical marketplace last year, and the vast majority raised some sort of income from selling goods - but they face disadvantages there which limits their livelihood benefits from market involvement.

Ethnic differences in market access

Average number of times HH goes to market monthly


none 14.6 % 2 %

1 to 4 71.7 % 54 %

5 to 10 7 % 10 %

11 or more 6.7 % 34 %

Minorities tend to use central marketplaces less than Kinh. Kinh report more frequent visits to markets.


Minorities also have less profitable crops to sell

• The survey shows Kinh are more likely to sell higher value industrial crops on the market (coffee, sugar, cashew, tea, fruit, etc). Minorities primarily sell lower value corn and cassava crops. They are also more likely to sell rice.

• Some EM communities, like the Khmer, sell their rice crop immediately after harvest to raise quick cash, but this is when the prices are usually lowest (IEMA 2007). The Khmer then have to buy rice later at a time when the price is higher than what they sold for.

• Other EM communities in the CSA reported selling unprocessed goods (corn on cobs, green coffee cherries, raw wet cassava) because of a lack of access to storage and processing facilities. This guarantees lower prices for these goods than if they were processed.

EMs sell high value cash crops at lower rates than Kinh

Products sold in market

% Ethnic minorities HH that

sell

% Kinh majority HH that sell

Rice 7.6 % 0 %

Maize 28 % 6 %

Fruit 11.5 % 22 %

Industrial/cash crops (coffee, tea, pepper, cashew, sugarcane, etc)

6.7 % 24%


Kinh Dominate Village Trading in EM areas

• Minorities are much less likely to engage in any sort of trading: only 3% of ethnic minority HHs reported income from trading, while 27% of Kinh HH did.

• Even in overwhelmingly minority villages, the village trader/shop owner is almost always Kinh.

• This is because there are cultural barriers to opening a shop for trade since much of minority village life is governed by community reciprocity - reciprocity that extends especially to those who accumulate capital or open stores/do trade.

• Minority people repeatedly stated that these social obligations, which cannot be refused, result in bad business, as it is also socially unacceptable to demand repayments of gifts and loans.

Disadvantages Minorities Face

• In the CSA survey, 82% of HH said the people they dealt with at markets were Kinh.

• Only 15% of minorities could use their mother tongue in the marketplace. The rest had to use Vietnamese or another second language. This disadvantages those who are not skilled or fluent in Kinh.

• Ethnic minority women’s lack of fluency in Vietnamese often keeps EM women away from marketplaces at much higher rates than Kinh, where women dominate petty trading.

Language may be a barrier to full market access

Tricks of the Marketplace

PRA revealed numerous ‘tricks’ that are used in the market place to reduce the prices paid for produce bought from EMs. Scales may be rigged by attaching a small piece of thick paper to the scale, resulting in mismeasurements of 20-30kgs on the 100kg. Mobile rice millers charge low rates to encourage minorities to mill their rice with them -- but then make a small hole in the bottom of the machine to collect extra rice (about 2.5kg per 50kg of rice milled), resulting in a profit about 10 times the charged price. Such tricks are played on everyone, but EMs reported these problems more often in PRA. In interviews with officials, they confirmed that traders often deliberately take advantage of EMs lack of language skills and literacy skills (interview with the Ede head of Dak Lak’s ethnic minority committee).

How traders take advantage of ethnic minorities

Do Minorities Need More Markets?

• 74% of HHs reported that traders come to their village to buy things. Only the Bo Y reported that traders did not often come to their village to buy products.

• This implies that physical marketplaces (infrastructure) may not always be needed to encourage minorities to engage in trading if mobile traders are already present and farmgate trading is taking place.

• Investment currently spent on building markets might then be better spent on credit or agricultural processing facilities, or preferential policies to increase EM involvement in business and trading.

Implications of Pillar Five

• Market access is about more than infrastructure. EMs use physical marketplaces less than Kinh, implying that investment in marketplaces may have benefited Kinh more than EMs.

• Access to markets is tied to other issue such as the ability of EMs to sell higher value or processed crops, and to obtain fair prices for them. Disadvantages in language, credit, and type of crops sold affect EMs’ ability to compete.

• There has been almost no policy attention paid to the fact that trading and business in minority areas is dominated by Kinh. Support to alternative models of trade that reflect community and cultural norms (such as loans to start community-owned supply stores rather than relying on private Kinh-owned ones) could be a option to give EMs a foothold in the market.

Pillar Six: Stereotyping and Attitudes Among and Toward EMs

• Stereotyping can lead to both decreased participation of EMs (due to lack of self-confidence) but also less inclination of authorities to listen to EMs because they are perceived to be ‘less educated’ or have ‘lower intellectual levels’.

• Stereotyping also leads to assumptions that are often not backed up by reality: that EMs are ‘aukartic’ or ‘nomadic’, when quantitative data shows most EMs produce for the market and no one is ‘nomadic’. Many Kinh beliefs about EMs are based on stereotypes that have persisted for many years, backed up by mass media, about the ‘backwardness’ of EMs.

How do Gov’t Cadre view EMs?

• “Ethnic minorities don’t know how to make a living” - head of EM committee, Ha Giang

• “Ethnic minorities don’t consume - they are only self-sufficient” - Ha Giang MOLISA official

• “Minorities don’t know how to use credit effectively” - representative of Social Policy Bank, Dak Lak

• “Minorities have low intellectual levels, which has an impact on their economies. They don’t know how to use technology or raise livestock” - vice head of Lak District, Dak Lak

• “Mnong let their pigs run around their stilt houses and sleep under the house. It’s very dirty and unhygienic” - head of Central Highlands ethnic office

Examples of attitudes expressed by gov’t cadre in field sites

Impacts of Stereotyping on EM Self Image

• Ethnic minorities are more likely to consider themselves backwards: 47.1 % do, compared to 16 % of Kinh.

• Ethnic minorities are also more likely to report that their own ethnic group is lazy: 12.1% of EMs said this was true, compared to 0% of the Kinh surveyed.

• Ethnic minorities view themselves as having low levels of education (73.9%), while only 52% of Kinh respondents reported their ethnic group has low levels of education.

Belief that EMs are less capable than Kinh is widespread among government cadres and also

among EMs themselves.

Stereotyping lumps all EMs together, ignoring differences among EMs

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Tay Hmong Paco VanKieu Kinh

BackwardLazyTradition-boundIgnorantSuperstitous

There are differences in self perception between ethnic groups; Tay for example do not often say they are ‘backward’, but that they have low education and are ‘ignorant’, while nearly 80% of Van Kieu think they

are ‘backwards’

Stereotyping may lead to flawed policy prescriptions

• For example, the stereotype that that EMs are nomadic and in need of sedentarization has resulted in funding of sedentarization programs that have not had discernible impacts on poverty or on deforestation (IEMA 2005).

• Belief that EMs are not market oriented can lead to funding of infrastructure (like markets) that benefits more Kinh than EMs, as EMs tend to engage in the market but at the village/farmgate, and they go to central commune/district markets less than Kinh.

• Belief that EMs have less intellectual capacity can result in investment in Kinh development to ‘show EMs how to develop’ as was the case with migration programs in Quang Tri, rather than directly investing in minority communities themselves.

EM access to gov't policies remains an open question

• Access to gov't policies varies considerably, but a lack of disaggregated data at gov’t levels prevents much analysis of access by EM groups. There is much we simply don’t know about access to gov't services, such as healthcare.

• EMs do not report higher rates of hesitance in using gov't services, but they do have lower rates of use - such as in credit access, smaller loans, and higher drop out rates for education.

• More research on this question -- and better data at all levels in EM areas -- is clearly needed to determine if the design of policy interventions is limiting EM access to needed services.

Conclusions: How Do the Six Pillars of Disadvantage Combine

to Perpetuate Poverty?• Less education and less mobility means less exposure to new ideas

and new productive crops.• Less productive lands and less access to industrial crops means

more dependence on low value crops. • Less access to trading and stable off farm employment means lower

incomes and more dependence on agriculture and low value wage labor.

• Less access to credit means less money to buy inputs for agriculture.• Less inputs for agriculture means lower productivity of crops.• Less productivity means less to sell at the market• Less to sell at the market means less overall income• Less overall income means less money to buy inputs or invest in

new diversified activities• Then the cycle starts again….

Disadvantages of EM Women

• 26 year old Mnong woman in Dak Lak: “I know I don’t speak Kinh very fluently, so I’m afraid to go to the market alone, because I don’t understand when people respond to me.”

• 52-year old Hmong woman with 2nd grade education: “No one invites women to the village meetings. I make sure I go because if I didn’t no women would be there. I have to go to make sure some woman is there.”

• 20 year old Dao woman: “The biggest expectation for us is to get married. If you are Dao and 15 years old you start to get nervous and scared if no one is interested yet. If you get to age 20 and you don’t have a husband, it’s too hard. You’re too old.”

• 21 year old Hmong woman: “I really didn’t want to have a 3rd child. But I was pressured by my mother-in-law who said that 2 was not enough. So I had another one, another son”.

Special barriers highlighted by EM women in field research

Challenges Facing EM Youth

• 18 yr old Ede girl: “I took photography classes from the district technical school, but I had to drop out before finishing the 12th grade because we didn’t have any money. If I wanted to go look for work, I’d be scared. I don’t have any relatives there, I don’t know any Ede there. That’s why I’m hesitant to leave the village to pursue my dream.”

• 23 yr old Ede man with 5th grade education: “There’s nothing to do here but be a laborer on the coffee plantation. There aren’t any books to read or newspapers here, not even at the commune. I don’t know anyone who has ever borrowed books to read.”

• 21 yr old Hmong man: “Some one in the family had to take care of our elderly parents, help them in the fields. So even though I wanted to study and become a cadre, I knew I had to help my family first, so I dropped out at 9th grade.”

• 20 yr old Dao boy: “We don’t really have any place to go with our Youth Union. We met at my house to practice singing together but my parents got annoyed and so we had to stop. There’s no place to watch TV, do anything, without electricity or a cultural house.”

EM youth share their dreams and the constraints they face

Some Possible Considerations for how the ‘Culture’ Variable might

be better built into EM policy• Language: While more than 90% of EMs speak their ethnic language

at home, less than half the HHs reported village and other meetings were held in minority languages. Extension and credit in particular are hard to assess for those without language skills. Increasing access to education and other services though bilingual EM cadre is important, as is increasing minority language training for Kinh cadres.

• EM Training: Cadres in EM communities often know little about local cultural preferences. Better government programming from the bottom up could better take into account local preferences: for example, the Hmong staple food is corn, not rice, yet they have been targeted with rice extension training. Sensitivity and affirmative action training to reduce stereotyping is also needed at all levels. Top down policies exacerbate these situations.

Other EM Policy Questions Raised by the CSA

• Targeting communities: Questions were raised by minority communities in PRA about current poverty efforts targeted at individual households versus communities. Some EMs prefer poverty targeting to the whole community if possible. Individual HH targeting is seen to increase inequality, not level it, among Ede and Mnong, for example. Some villages said they could not pick a small number of poor HH for HEPR/P134 benefits without causing community discord overall. Community sentiment is very strong in many EM areas -- policies that recognize this are more likely to succeed. Suggestions might include more attention to agricultural and processing co-ops in EM villages to play on this community sentiment to build in stronger bargaining power in the market for EM produce.

• Targeting some ethnic groups: Some EMs are clearly better off than others (the indigenous minorities in in Dak Lak are doing worse than EM migrants; Mnong doing worse than Ede on income; Ede doing worse than Mnong on loss of lands/landlessness). While some provinces have asked for ethnically specific funding, there is still a national preference for blanket EM and geographically targeted policies. A discussion should take place: is a general policy always warranted? Which might be made ethnically specific?

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NXB Dan Toc Hoc.• IEMA - Hoang Cong Dung, Tran Van Doai, Pham Anh Duc, and Pamela McElwee. (2006). Access By Ethnic

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Understanding ethnic minority poverty in Vietnam

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