As Vietnam's population moves to the cities, the poor struggle for the most basic of human needs. Will they be left behind?
Vietnam has the highest urbanization rate in Southeast Asia. Just a decade ago, only 24% of its population lived in cities, with 65% of the labor force employed in rural agriculture. Today, already more than 30 million people live in urban areas, accounting for approximately 34% of Vietnam’s total population. The country is witnessing a rapid proliferation of urban areas, with the number of towns or cities at 755 and rising. Planners estimate that Vietnam’s cities will be home to more than 46 million people by the year 2020. The largest of these cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are the growth engines of the country, supported by a relatively low urban unemployment rate of 4.6%.
With its newly attained status as a middle income country and its ambitions to achieve higher levels of human development, Vietnam needs to address challenges in basic social service provisions for both rural and urban populations. In particular, Vietnam will have to cope with rural-urban migration, a global megatrend that will continue to trouble city planners for the foreseeable future. Many poor rural Vietnamese will try their luck in the thriving urban centers, perceiving them to be full of job opportunities for both skilled and unskilled workers. Urban planners need to find a way to accommodate this influx of migrants and account for the fact that most of them are ill-equipped to participate in the urban economy.
The latest infographic (see below) from the Asian Trends Monitoring (ATM) team tells a story about Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, and how it fares in its struggle to provide basic services for its people. The numbers and information in the infographic are a combination of secondary data from the World Bank, primary data from the ATM poverty profile survey, as well as information from interviews ATM conducted in the field in September 2012.
(Source: Asian Trends Monitoring)
This infographic highlights the emerging issues that Hanoi’s poor must contend with. Although Vietnam’s GDP is growing and income levels among the poor are rising, it does not necessarily translate into improved access to services. There are several limitations to the government’s service provision capacity, which leads to things like a strict “poor list” of eligible households.
The services available to Hanoi’s poor are extremely limited and often inaccessible to those most in need. Migrants and seasonal workers, often among the city’s poorest residents, are by default not eligible for the poor list because they are not official Hanoi residents. Furthermore, they are unable to access decent housing and financial services.
As most of Hanoi’s poor are self-employed in the informal sector, they often require loans for working capital and consumption. Unfortunately, microfinance services in urban areas are rarely available. The survey data confirms the lack of choice when Hanoi’s poor are in need of credit. The overwhelming majority of respondents, 73.9%, take private loans from relatives or friends. Even the services of informal money lenders, often the next most popular alternative when the formal financial system is inaccessible (compare with ATM Bulletin 17 “Manila’s Poor”), are only used by 7.8% of these individuals.
The poor are also deprived when it comes to health services. If they are unable to afford health insurance at market rates, they are forced to pay out-of-pocket for every treatment. An ongoing commercialization of health services has further worsened the gap between the affluent and the poor. The UNDP Human Development Report notes that attempts to ensure sustainable social service funding have led “to the increasing commercialization of public social services, and over-reliance on user fees by service delivery organizations.” More than 50% of respondents have difficulties in paying for health treatments. As a result, many choose to self-medicate or leave their ailments untreated. Moreover, over a third (36%) of those who make use of locally available clinics are dissatisfied with the service quality.
As we explain in our new report, ATM Bulletin 18 “Empowering Hanoi’s Poor”, there are a number of viable strategies to narrow the service gap and reduce urban poverty in Vietnam’s capital. These include a stronger focus on building social enterprises– for example, in the service and tourism sector– as well as comprehensive access to financial services for micro-entrepreneurs through affordable microfinance.
Both of these strategies focus on empowerment rather than direct provision of services. Although building clinics and schools for the poor can be effective at times, microfinance institutions provide the poor with the capital they need to start and grow their own businesses. Secondly, these approaches are also more financially sustainable because they are run on a for-profit basis and allow the organizations to expand their services both in reach and in duration.
The resulting improvements in household income will, in the long run, enable the beneficiaries to access and pay for existing services, without depending on handouts from the government.
Taufik Indrakesuma & Johannes Loh are research associates at the Asian Trends Monitoring Bulletin at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, University of Singapore.
Photo Credit: davidconger.com (flickr)
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Bảo hành Appollo, bao hanh appollo
Helpful information. Lucky me I found your website unintentionally, and I’m stunned why this coincidence did not happened in advance! I bookmarked it.
Naht
China is rich? I doubt it. She is rich only in total GDP with 1.3 billion people. In term of GDP per capital, she is still developing country and her economy relies too much on exporting to US and Europe while the domestic consumption is still low.
She is using her earning to back up other countries for bad intention, such as to Cambodia. People will wonder why China has so much money to do this and that. The answer is instead of using her earning to improve social welfare for her citizens, she uses that money to buy weapons and all to threat other countries.
And there are some Chinese, who are so "innocent" that they don't know the amount of money they should have been received is used to buy guns and ships which are for nothing because every countries know the danger of war and try to avoid it. A child playing with a knife may cut himself one day. Be careful!
I have a feeling that China is stepping into the footage of Germany and Japan in the World War. Try to look at the result of these two after the war. Mongol Empire collapsed, Roman Empire collapsed, Manchu Empire collapsed…all of them, at the end of the day, had to get out of other people's home to go back to their own home. So China should be careful when attempting to expand its power and territory as they might have to go back to their little true home which is just around the Huang He river.
Pham Anh Tuan
i cant expect a better answer and explanation :) well-done !
Observer
Dear readers,
Here are a few more links so you can see for yourself about the so called "prosperity" as John Chan and other chinese posters tried to fool us. To moderators, these links are valid and not spam.
http://news.yahoo.com/tensions-mount-police-grab-protesters-china-045903733.html
http://news.yahoo.com/2-tibetan-cousins-set-themselves-fire-china-151031725.html
http://www.china-mike.com/facts-about-china/facts-rich-poor-inequality/
http://chinaview.wordpress.com/2006/09/05/world-bank-china-quick-facts-poverty/
The facts are speaking for themselves.
Cam
LOL. So Johnny boy, do you need more links?
Observer
@JC,
Vietnam does not have to claim anything. Proven history is on her side. Readers can use Google and look up “history of Vietnam” and see for themselves how many times the bullies from china have been beaten all by Vietnam. From the Quin to Ming to Yuan to Han just to name a few, china/chinese tried and tried countless times to invade but still ended up with huge shame and humiliation.
The rich guys/gals from my link are from the CCP (Chinese communist party). They have gotten very rich because of corruption while the working Chinese living like sub humans (see my link above about china’s huge pollution problem). Who would want to live like that or look up to china/Chinese for prosperity? Who would want to be jealous of things like that?
Still no reply about my statements of Chinese poachers being shot dead by Russian navy? What is the matter? Why so silent?
We are still waiting for links/stories about US F-22 planes made by china. What are you waiting for? LOL.