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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of international remittances on different household welfare indicators including child education, assets, durable goods, and reservation wages of other working age household members. It examines how international remittances are spent for production and consumption by receiving households.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses fixed‐effect regressions to estimate the impact of international remittances on household spending in Vietnam using Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys 2006 and 2008.FindingsIt is found that most of international remittances are spent on housing and land, debt repayment and saving. A small proportion of remittances are used to buy durable goods. Remittances are not spent in production as well as living consumptions. The effect of international remittances on consumption‐based poverty is very limited.Originality/valueThe findings from this paper suggest that current international remittances are not an effective measure for poverty reduction in the short‐run in Vietnam.

Vietnam is implementing a long run reform agenda for the power sector, with the aim of restructuring the sector to improve internal operations, efficiency, and the quality of services. The World Bank has an ongoing engagement in the sector which started in 1995. The design and implementation of the power sector reform strategy has been supported through technical assistance and lending operations, as well as preparation of a proposed series of Power Sector Reform Development Policy Loans (DPLs). A number of Poverty and Social Impact Assessment (PSIA) activities will be carried out in support of Vietnam's power sector reforms and as part of the World Bank's due diligence work for the power sector DPLs. This PSIA focuses on assessing the distributional impacts of recent tariff reforms introduced in March, 2009 which changed Vietnam's Incremental Block Tariff (IBT) structure for residential consumers. In addition to changes in lifeline tariffs and coverage, all on-grid rural consumers were brought under a unified tariff structure.