Suchergebnisse

Background: Vietnam currently has a rapidly aging population, while formal social protection has only covered a small fraction of older people. Therefore, many older people with insufficient income or poor health must rely on their children's support. Method: This study uses the Vietnam National Aging Survey 2011 to determine whether the quality of children's education/employment and the number of children in a family impact older people's life satisfaction and health. Results: We find that the number of children has no effect on parents' life satisfaction but is adversely related to parents' health across a range of physical and mental health measures. In contrast, children's education has beneficial impacts on the well-being of elderly parents. Parents with better-educated children are more satisfied with their lives and report better health and fewer illness issues. Among other factors, income and wealth are strong and consistent predictors of older people's life satisfaction and self-perceived physical and mental health. Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the relationship between quantity and quality of children and the well-being of elderly parents. Our results show that the number of children has an adverse effect on older people's self-reported health and life satisfaction in Vietnam. Meanwhile, parental health and life satisfaction are significantly related to children's education. The findings of this study provide several practical implications. Most importantly, investment in education for children will have long-lasting impacts on the health and well-being of elderly adults. In addition, our paper indicates that the government program for reducing fertility has contributed to the longer-term health of people.

This paper examines the effect of fertility on the participation of women in the labor market and other labor market outcomes in Vietnam, using Vietnam Labor Force Survey data. To address the endogeneity issue in fertility, we use an instrumental variable estimation method based on parental preference for the mixed-sex composition of the first two children. Our findings indicate that number of children has a negative impact on maternal participation in the labor market and on working hours but has no effect on earnings. We find that the effect on participation in the market is important for younger women aged 21–35 years but insignificant for older women aged 36–50 years. The older group responds by reducing their working hours rather than leaving the labor force. Our results support the position that the rise in female participation in the labor force in Vietnam can be partially attributed to the overall decline in fertility during the last three decades and helps validate the Vietnamese government's planning policy.

This study explores the impact of COVID-19 and how Vietnamese citizens perceived and experienced measures adopted by central and local governments to contain the CVODI-19 pandemic in 2021. In general, the COVID-19 pandemic had a more severe impact in 2021 than in 2020. Citizens showed great concern about their children's education (76 percent) and their personal health (68 percent). COVID-19 negatively impacted employment and income, with 77 percent of the respondents reporting income reduction due to the pandemic. The poor, ethnic minorities, unskilled, non-farm workers, and those working in the service sector or living in provinces with longer lockdowns were the most likely to suffer. Compared with 2020, in 2021, respondents showed a high but declining positive assessment of government performance in dealing with the pandemic, with 84 percent of the respondents rating the responses from the Central Government as good or very good (97 percent in 2020), 89 percent rating the response from their provincial governments' responses as good or very good (94 percent in 2020). Only 13 percent of the respondents received support from the Government's package. However, ethnic minorities, female, poorer and rural respondents were less likely to receive the support. For the support recipients, delivery was regarded as timely and transparent, but administrative procedures to get access to the package were not simple. Meanwhile, support from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social organizations, charity foundations, and individuals was distributed more efficiently, with 25 percent of the respondents receiving support from these sources.