+ In addition, the author also directly recorded, videotaped, and took notes of voters' opinions through voter contact sessions of National Assembly deputies at voter contact points in Muong Nhe district, Nam Ke commune (Muong Nhe), Muong Cha district, Huoi Leng commune (Muong Cha), Muong Lay town in Dien Bien. At the same time, the author also conducted interviews with doctors, nurses, and patients at medical stations; students in Nam Ke commune and some places where the author visited to conduct investigations and surveys.
The content of the investigation, survey and interview focused on identifying the characteristics of the poor in the Northwest, their income and expenditure situation, improving living conditions and living conditions as well as their ability to access essential services (health, education, electricity, water, market, etc.) of the poor in the Northwest; the impact of factors and poverty reduction policies on the production activities and lives of the poor; the extent and causes of limitations in the development and implementation of poverty reduction policies in the Northwest.
Chapter 1 Summary
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In general, previous studies have either pointed out contradictory changes in the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction or have only mentioned the impact of economic growth or economic development on poverty reduction or have only pointed out changes in this relationship that are influenced by policy factors, the role of the State in choosing different policy systems and solutions that can lead to different results on economic growth, social inequality and poverty. Most studies on poverty, poverty reduction or economic growth, socio-economic development have only mentioned the issues separately and independently or have studied poverty reduction and socio-economic development from previous periods when there were no mechanisms, policies and development conditions like the current period. Regarding poverty reduction and socio-economic development in the Northwest, up to now, there has been no in-depth study to point out poverty reduction solutions for socio-economic development in the Northwest. With the research "Solutions to reduce poverty to develop socio-economy in Northwest Vietnam", the research is conducted on the basis of inheriting, learning, criticizing and summarizing experiences from previous studies while combining with conducting interviews, investigations, and surveys on the actual situation of socio-economic development and poverty reduction in the Northwest.
CHAPTER 2
THEORY AND PRACTICE ON POVERTY REDUCTION AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
2.1. Theory of poverty and poverty reduction
2.1.1. Concept of poverty
The concept of poverty and the relationship between poverty reduction and socio-economic development depend on the specific political, economic and social conditions of each country. Poverty is a historical concept, depending on different approaches, the way to express the concept of poverty is also different.
In the Pali Canon, poverty is conceived in two aspects: (i) The concept of poverty is related to misery, hindering an individual from participating in community life, leading to many profound limitations (poverty here means hardship, misery); (ii) The concept of poverty is accepted for religious purposes to be able to develop spiritual life, "virtue" is a symbol of mutual connections between people.
And the open encyclopedia of Wikipedia states: “Poverty describes the lack of opportunity to live a life corresponding to certain minimum standards.”
According to the United Nations, poverty is a shortage compared to a minimum standard of living of a country and poverty has two forms: absolute poverty and relative poverty. Absolute poverty is the situation where a part of the population is unable to satisfy the minimum needs to maintain life in terms of food (lack of food but not missing meals), clothing, housing, hygiene, health care, education. Relative poverty is the situation where a part of the population has a standard of living below the average of the local community.
At the conference on poverty reduction organized by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in Bangkok, Thailand (held from September 15-17, 1993), the definition of poverty was given: "Poverty is a situation in which a part of the population does not have enough
enjoy and satisfy basic human needs, which are recognized by society depending on the level of socio-economic development and local customs and practices" .
In 1995, the World Summit on Social Development held in Copenhagen, Denmark defined poverty as follows: The poor are all those whose income is less than 1 USD/day, which is considered enough to buy essential products for survival.
In June 2000 in Geneva, the special meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on social development called on the international community to step up the "Attack on Poverty" campaign and recommended that countries need to have a comprehensive strategy on poverty reduction. Then, in September 2000, the United Nations Millennium Conference in Washington affirmed that fighting poverty is considered one of the important contents, the top priority in the current world development goals.
Although there are many different concepts of poverty, in general, those concepts are reflected in the following aspects: No or little enjoyment of basic needs at the minimum level of human life; living standards lower than the average living standards of the local community; lack or no opportunity to choose to participate in the development process of the community. There are two types of poverty:
+ Absolute poverty : Is the state of a part of the population unable to satisfy the minimum needs to maintain life. Minimum needs are the minimum guarantees of essential needs for food, clothing, housing and daily living needs including: culture, health care, education, travel, communication [75].
+ Relative poverty : Is the situation where a part of the population has a standard of living below the average of the local community where that part of the population lives.
The concept of poverty can be unified qualitatively but cannot be unified quantitatively. Because each country is different, the living standards of the people are also different or even within a country, the living standards between regions and areas are also different. Moreover, the quantitative aspect of poverty also fluctuates over time corresponding to the fluctuations in the socio-economic development of that country. Therefore,
Each country has developed its own measure of poverty through specific criteria known as poverty lines and uses them as the basis for determining the country's poverty rate.
- Poverty rate: “ The poverty rate is the percentage of people or households whose living standards are lower than the poverty line in the total number of people or households studied” [36]. In which the living standards are measured by the following measures:
Unidimensional measure: “ This measure measures the economic aspect of living standards” and is calculated using per capita household income or expenditure from household income, expenditure or living standards surveys.
Countries that choose income as a single-dimensional measure of living standards believe that income reflects the true living standards of households more than expenditure [79].
Countries that choose expenditure as a single-dimensional measure of living standards believe that the accuracy of expenditure survey data is often higher than that of income survey data, and that expenditure levels reflect the true living standards of households more than income, while income is often not very stable over a certain period [79].
In fact, it is possible to control the quality of income data more than expenditure data of poor households. But depending on certain conditions, each country will choose income or expenditure as the measure to determine the poverty rate of its country (Vietnam uses income measure when calculating the poverty rate while the WB uses expenditure measure).
Multidimensional measure: Multidimensional measure considers the living standard of the population in a more complete and comprehensive way. It measures the living standard both economically and in terms of quality of life in different dimensions such as: non-monetary status, vulnerability, risk, freedom, social exclusion, discrimination, human rights violations, etc. Measuring the living standard in multidimensional terms is to determine the indicators to measure the dimensions and to combine the dimensions into a single measure or to keep each dimension separate and use the weights of the dimensions. “However, due to difficulties in data, in practice the multidimensional poverty measure only measures human development in three dimensions: average life expectancy; educational level and quality of life (measured
real GDP per capita in PPP$)” [79]. Many multidimensional measures have been researched, developed and applied in many countries.
In short , “both unidimensional and multidimensional poverty measures have different advantages, disadvantages, and impacts on poverty reduction. Unidimensional poverty measures address poverty issues in the short term while multidimensional measures address poverty in the long term” [79].
Vietnam's concept of poverty is to acknowledge the general definition of poverty given by the Asia-Pacific Conference on Poverty Prevention organized by ESCAP in Bangkok, Thailand in September 1993: "Poverty is a situation in which a part of the population does not enjoy and satisfy basic human needs that have been recognized by society depending on the level of socio-economic development and local customs and practices". Vietnam's poverty is being studied as absolute poverty, the poverty measurement that Vietnam has applied is a single-dimensional approach (recently, there have also been some studies approaching poverty using a multidimensional poverty measurement).
2.1.2. Poverty standards and assessment criteria
Poverty is a relative concept, because the poor in one country may not be poor or may be more extremely poor than in another country. “Different countries use different standards to assess the level of wealth and poverty. The poverty situation in each country is different in both level and quantity, changing over time and space” [75]. To assess the poverty level of a country or a locality, many indicators are applied such as the human poverty index (HPI), GINI coefficient, TheiL coefficient, GDP...
Concept of poverty line : Poverty line is the average income (or expenditure) per capita that a country sets as a standard to identify poor people or poor households. Accordingly, "people or households with average income (or expenditure) per capita lower than the poverty line are considered poor people or poor households" [69, p.662].
The WB has given the following poverty measure:
- Developed industrial countries are 14 USD/day/person
- East Asian countries: 4USD/person/day
- Latin American and Caribbean countries: 2 USD/person/day
- Developing countries are 1 USD/person/day. And for poor countries, some people are considered poor when their income is less than 0.5 USD/day/person [58].
However, each country sets its own poverty line, which is often lower than the poverty line recommended by the WB. For example:
- In 1970, the United States set the poverty threshold as income below 5,500 USD/household of 4 people/year; by 1988 it was raised to below 10,921 USD/household of 4 people/year; in 1992 it was 13,680 USD/household of 4 people/year [18].
- China set a poverty line of 206 yuan/person/year (1986) in rural areas. In 1990 it was 300 yuan. “In 2000, China's poverty line was adjusted to 625 yuan; in 2007 it was raised to 786 yuan/person/year and in 2008 it was
1,196 NDT/person/year” [8] equivalent to 175 USD/year.
- Some poverty lines calculated by Calorie consumption of some countries are as follows:
+ Malaysia: 2,910Kcal/day for a family of 2 adults and 3 children
+ Pakistan takes the poor line as consuming 2,350Kcal/adult/day.
+ Philippines level 2,000 Kcal/person/day.
+ Sri Lanka: 2,500Kcal/person/day;
+ Nepal: 2,124 Kcal/person/day;
+ Thailand: 2,099 Kcal/person/day;
+ Azerbaijan 2,200 Kcal/person/day;
+ Laos, Cambodia,.... poverty threshold is 2,100Kcal/person/day
Even within a country, people use different poverty standards for each region and area.
* Poverty standards and poverty assessment criteria in Vietnam
- In 1993, the General Statistics Office established the 1993 food poverty line in urban and rural areas using the value of two corresponding food baskets (at 1993 prices). The poverty line in the following years was calculated using the value of the food basket of
1993 multiplied by the price of the corresponding year. According to this calculation, the poverty line applied in 1998 in Vietnam was 107,234 VND/person/month.
- The poverty line applied for the period 2001-2005 nationwide for each region (according to Decision No. 1143/2000/QD-BLDTBXH) is built based on the average income per capita in each region as follows:
. Rural mountainous areas and islands: 80,000 VND/person/month
. Rural plains are 100,000 VND/person/month
Urban areas 150,000 VND/person/ month
- Vietnam's poverty line applied for the period 2006 - 2010 (according to Decision No. 170/2005/QD-TTg) basically still takes the 2002 living standard survey data of 2,100kcal and calculates according to the prices of items in the separate basket of 2 regions in 2002, then updates according to the separate consumer price index of 2 regions in 2006 to define poor households for the two rural and urban areas as households with average income as follows:
+ Rural area: 200,000 VND/person/month.
+ Urban area: 260,000 VND/person/month.
- The poverty line for the period 2011-2015 has been adjusted to take into account influencing factors to continue the poverty reduction campaign, contributing to the socio-economic development of the country. Decision No. 09/2011/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister stipulates that the poverty line and near-poor line in urban and rural areas are households with the following average income:
+ Poor households in rural areas: 400,000 VND/person/month or less.
+ Poor households in urban areas: 500,000 VND/person/month or less.
+ Near-poor households in rural areas: 401,000 VND to 520,000 VND/person/month.
+ Near-poor households in urban areas: 501,000 VND to 650,000 VND/person/month.
In addition to identifying poor households, Vietnam also builds criteria for poor areas, poor communes, and especially disadvantaged communes that need to be prioritized for poverty reduction resources to create rapid changes in the material and spiritual lives of poor households and ethnic minorities, aiming that by 2020 these localities will have a poverty rate equal to that of other localities in the region. Poor communes are communes with: Percentage of households
25% or more of the population is poor and does not have 3 out of 6 essential infrastructure items (roads; schools; health stations; domestic water; electricity; markets) [13], such as: less than 30% of households use clean water; less than 50% of households use electricity; there is no car road to the commune center or cars cannot travel all year round; the number of classrooms (according to regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training) only meets less than 70% of students' needs or the classrooms are temporary made of thatch, bamboo, rattan, and leaves; there is no commune health station or there is but it is temporary.
Poor districts are districts where the poverty rate is greater than 50% of the total number of households.
2.1.3. Causes of poverty
Poverty is a historical phenomenon that arose in the process of socio-economic development of countries. Poverty directly affects the lives of people, society and communities. To achieve the best results in poverty reduction, it is necessary to correctly identify the causes of poverty in each region, each area in each country, thereby having a direct impact on the causes of poverty to effectively implement poverty reduction. Specifically as follows:
- Subjective causes:
+ Subjectivity of the poor themselves: low level of education and training; no business experience, no knowledge of production and business, no knowledge of how to allocate expenses or wasteful spending or due to laziness; due to having many children, being single; due to encountering risks (accidents, illness, etc.); due to lack or inability to work; due to lack or no capital; due to social evils (gambling, drug addiction, lottery, etc.).
+ Subjectivity of authorities at all levels: lack of capacity, expertise, knowledge, experience as well as financial ability to regularly care for, care for, help and support the poor to reduce difficulties.
- Objective reasons
+ Due to natural conditions such as: unfavorable climate and weather; barren land, steep terrain, rugged mountains and difficult cultivation; living in remote areas without transportation routes; due to natural disasters, unexpected epidemics, etc.