ABSTRACT Blue-collar employment growth increases schooling opportunities by raising incomes, but also reduces incentives for some students to advance beyond compulsory education. These contradictory influences may help to explain relatively slow and uneven growth of progression to upper-secondary schooling in Vietnam, which has experienced a foreign investment boom in mainly low-skill manufacturing industries. We use data on participation rates and scores in an upper-secondary school entrance exam to analyze variation due to demand-side and supply-side factors. The data come from less advanced provinces and so illuminate the challenges of deepening educational development at the extensive margin, especially among ethnic minority populations.

Getting to Grade 10 in Vietnam: does an employment boom discourage schooling?

Dynamics of wage inequality over the pro-longed economic transformation: The case of Vietnam

This study intends to estimate the rate of returns to education in Vietnam, the distributive effects of education on wages, and the wage penalty from the incidence of overeducation in the Vietnamese labor market during 2004–2016. This study employs a pseudo-panel approach to address omitted variables bias and the unconditional quantile regression to identify the heterogeneity of returns to education across the income distribution. Our main finding indicates that the estimated rate of returns to education in Vietnam is approximately 6.5%, showing a downward bias from previous estimates. The returns vary across wage distributions, where a lower rate of return is observed in lower quantiles and a higher rate among those individuals at the higher quantiles. The returns to education have declined since 2008, confirming the oversupply of highly educated workers in the Vietnamese labor market with an estimated wage penalty of 17%. Government assistance measures are needed to reduce the overeducation and the wage penalty issues in the Vietnamese labor market. 

The returns to education and wage penalty from overeducation: New evidence from Vietnam

Education and training play a very vital role in the income of a worker, the sustainable economic development of the country, and reduction of inequality. This study aims to examine the return to schooling of salaried workers in Vietnam, aged from 15-65 years old. A regression model with an instrumental variable is used to tackle the endogeneity problem. We use the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey in 2014-2016 and 2018. The average economic return to schooling are 4% for workers and are stable for the studied periods. The demographic characteristics of employees, such as age, gender, marital status and ethinicity, have a significant impact on hourly earnings. Laborers working in the public sector and companies with foreign investment have higher income than those working in the private sector. The research results provide more scientific evidence for policymakers and employees in wage policies and investment in education for human resources in the future.

The return to schooling in vietnam from 2014 to 2018: an evaluation based on instrumental variables

Abstract This study revisits returns to education in three Vietnamese rural provinces, using data on seven waves between 2007 and 2017, taken from the Thailand Vietnam SocioEconomic Panel (TVSEP). We deploy various approaches to address the endogeneity problem, and the findings show that individuals with a lower secondary school diploma are likely to earn a higher wage income. The present research also provides evidence of heterogeneity in the rate of return in terms of sex and ethnicity. In particular, men need a lower secondary school diploma, while women require an upper secondary school diploma to improve their wage income. Similarly, the relationship between a lower secondary school diploma and wage income is found among the majority of the Kinh people, but ethnic minorities do not enjoy this benefit. Overall, the benefits of education are crucial among the labor force, especially for vulnerable groups, such as women and ethnic minorities, who would benefit from the support of policymakers.

Thi Thu Phuong Pham

Papers

Returns to education in Vietnam: A changing landscape