PROJECT
Findings from Recent and Ongoing Youth and Family Studies in Vietnam

Vietnam has reached an historic peak in the size of its youth population. Young people ages 10–24 who account for approximately one-third of the country’s 84-million total population are coming of age now. They belong to a larger cohort than all preceding and succeeding cohorts. Over the last decade, Vietnam’s rapid economic growth has provided young people with new opportunities unheard of in their parents' generation. This is, however, not the case for ethnic minority youth. Many of them remain the poorest, least healthy, and least educated of Vietnam's population. Ethnic minorities, who tend to live in remote mountainous areas, account for 15 percent of Vietnam’s total population and, according to a recent estimate, 61 percent of them are poor.

Despite recent efforts by the Government of Vietnam to promote poverty reduction in remote areas, a majority of ethnic minorities have not yet experienced positive change, contrary to majority Vietnamese (i.e., Kinh). In 2007 well over half of minority youth grew up in impoverished households. As these young people enter their working and reproductive years, they face an array of employment, health, and reproductive health challenges.

In 2006–07, Population Council researchers, in collaboration with researchers from Thai Nguyen Medical College, conducted a study to understand transitions to adulthood among young people in poor remote areas of northern Vietnam. This study provides empirically validated findings on the degree of change and the determinants of change in young people’s educational attainment, transition to work, and transition to marriage and parenthood. Further, the study illustrates the consequences of such change for the livelihoods of young people, particularly the implications for their sexual and reproductive health. The study aims to identify areas of intervention that best address the needs of Vietnam’s most marginalized young population.

According to this poverty map of Thai Nguyen Province, Phuong Giao and Trang Xa—the two 2006 study communes—are located in areas where poverty rates are about 70-80 percent. The nine villages being surveyed are among the most remote in Thai Nguyen Province.

In this study, researchers combine quantitative and qualitative analyses drawing on rich data from community appraisals, village censuses, a household survey, and in-depth interviews. Sixty young people ages 15–29 were randomly selected from the Kinh, Dao, and Hmong populations for interview. Each young respondent and his or her parents were interviewed twice. The research team processed population censuses of nine study villages and carried out a household sampling survey in 150 households. The strength of the intensive research design is that it permits an investigation of broader institutional and historical contexts of individual and family behavior.

The 2006–07 study was preceded by two other studies: the 2003 and 1999 surveys. In 2003 researchers from the Council and the Institute of Sociology undertook a multi-method study to investigate crucial issues affecting the lives of young Vietnamese people from the majority ethnic group. The study focused on young people ages 15–29 in four periurban and rural communes in the north and south of Vietnam. The experience of young people in communities where new work opportunities are prevalent was contrasted to that of young people in communities where fewer opportunities exist. (map and more on methodology)

In 1999 the Population Council conducted a quantitative and qualitative survey of adolescents and social change in Vietnam in collaboration with the Institute of Sociology in Hanoi. The survey was conducted among 1,500 boys and girls ages 15–22 in six provinces representing a range of communities. An analysis of this survey suggests that the lack of adequate employment opportunities may be more of a threat to adolescent well-being than risky sexual behaviors per se—a situation that effective economic policies can remedy. (Mensch, Clark, Dang 2003 [PDF])

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Population Council researchers

Sajeda Amin, Wesley Clark, Jane Hughes, Barbara S. Mensch, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan

Non-Council collaborators

2006: Hac Van Vinh, Nguyen Thi Phuong Lan, other researchers (Thai Nguyen Medical College, Thai Nguyen)

2003: Vu Tuan Huy, Vu Manh Loi (Institute of Sociology, Hanoi)

1999: Dang Nguyen Anh (Vietnam Asian-Pacific Economic Center; at the Institute of Sociology, Hanoi, at the time of the 1999 survey)

Donors

Anonymous

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Population Council

The Rockefeller Foundation

Publications/Resources on this project

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