Infrastructure and Poverty in Vietnam Book

Viet Nam has poor physical infrastructure and high levels of income poverty. What role might better infrastructure play in reducing poverty in Viet Nam? This paper explores the link between poverty and lack of infrastructure using the 1992-93 Viet Nam Living Standards Survey. The household data indicate that, although there are some regional and urban-rural imbalances, in general, access to infrastructure is not very different between poor and non-poor - infrastructure tends to be bad for everyone. Simulations of the potential benefits from an expansion of irrigation infrastructure, and under certain assumptions about how it would be distributed, suggest that the policy would be redistributive, representing proportionately greater gains to the poor. The most pro-poor impacts would occur in Viet Nam ' s poorest regions and under a policy which targeted irrigation expansion to small per capita landholding households. The average annual economic rate of return of the irrigation investments considered would be at least 20 percent. The paper also finds evidence that various constraints over and above that presented by lack of irrigation appear to diminish the benefits of irrigation to poor and non-poor alike.