During Vietnam's two decades of rapid economic growth, its fertility rate has fallen sharply at the same time that its educational attainment has risen rapidly-macro trends that are consistent with the hypothesis of a quantity-quality tradeoff in child-rearing. This paper investigates whether...

Given its modest position as a lower-middle-income country, Vietnam stands out from the rest of the world with its remarkable performance on standardized test scores, school enrollment, and completed years of schooling. This paper provides an overview of the factors behind this exemplary...

This paper examines the nature and drivers of Vietnam's paradoxical performance in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) - consistently high student achievement despite being the poorest of all participating countries and a centralized education system. We first document...

Household consumption data are often unavailable, not fully collected, or incomparable over time in poorer countries. Survey-to-survey imputation has been increasingly employed to address these data gaps for poverty measurement, but its effective use requires standardized protocols. We refine...

Vietnam is widely regarded as a success story for its impressive economic growth and poverty reduction in the last few decades. Yet, recent evidence indicates that the country's economic growth has not been uniform. Compiling and analyzing new extensive province-level data from the Vietnam...

Despite a sizable population and modest status as a low middle-income country, Vietnam has recorded a low COVID-19 fatality rate that rivals those of richer countries with far larger spending on health. We offer an early review of the emerging literatures in public health and economics on the...

Little literature currently exists on the effects of childcare use on maternal labor market outcomes in a developing country context, and the few recent studies offer mixed results. We attempt to fill these gaps by analyzing several latest rounds of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey...

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in income and employment loss in many countries around the world. Yet, hardly any formal study exists on household finance and future economic expectations in poorer countries. To fill in this gap, we implemented and analyzed a web-based rapid assessment survey...