Land Allocation Policy for Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam

Vietnam's achievements in poverty reduction are one of the greatest successful stories in economic development. However, the ethnic minorities still lag behind in many aspects of development progress: they remain among the poorest, least educated segments of the Vietnamese society. While there are a number of policies targeted to the minorities, their efficiency is still a question. In the past 30 years, there have been many changes in land policy, enormously affecting the ethnic relationship, livelihood practices as well as cultural traditions of the ethnic minorities. In an attempt to bridge the disparity between the ethnic minorities and the Kinh majority, policy on allocation of farming land and housing land is targeted to the ethnic minorities starting from 2002. Employing Propensity Score Matching estimator, this study aims at evaluating the welfare impact of policy on allocation farming land and housing land for the ethnic minorities. It also deals with assessing whether the program is efficiently targeted as being designed and analyzing trends in poverty profile (using FGT poverty indices) to identify difference of poverty level between the minorities and non-minorities.