Multidimensional poverty of ethnic minority households: A case study in A Luoi district, Thua Thien Hue province

Abstract

“Poverty” is widely known as a multifaceted concept and could be evaluated using multidimensional measurements. In Vietnam, there is still too little research conducted at the micro level in villages, communes, and households. This study explored multidimensional poverty in ethnic minority communities in the Central region of Vietnam. Based on the result of the survey of 221 ethnic minority farmers in A Luoi district, Thua Thien Hue province, this study applied the Alkire-Foster method to measure the multidimensional poverty of farmers through 11 indicators of 6 aspects of poverty, including income, education, health care, housing, living standard, and information access. The results showed that about 39.82% of households are in multidimensional poverty. The degree of deprivation in the 6 poverty dimensions was not consistent, with a large proportion of shortages related to income (72.64%), housing area (6.04%), and adult education (6%). Using the Binary Logistic Regression model showed that 8 factors affect the multidimensional poverty of ethnic minority households, including family size, farm size, number of livestock, irrigation, diverse farm income sources, diverse non-farm income sources, distance to central markets, and number of adverse external influences. Critical recommendations from the study to reduce multidimensional poverty of ethnic minority households include: diversifying livelihood activities for households, both non-farm and on-farm, with a greater focus on livestock; maintaining and developing good agricultural production land, including investment in irrigation and mechanisation of production; strengthening support for farmers to access the market...