In this study, two multiple linear regression models are used to determine the impacts of variables related to the household characteristics, main jobs of heads, and the access of public services on monthly per capita expenditure of the poor and non-poor based on the data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey 2010. The results obtained from the analysis indicate that households in the rural areas and ethnic minorities are poorer. Likewise, households with larger family size, higher dependent rate and smaller working member proportion are poorer. | Hue University Journal of Science ISSN 1859-1388 Vol. 113, No. 14, 2015, pp. 99-111 FACTORS AFFECTING ECONOMIC WELL-BEING AMONG POOR AND NON-POOR HOUSEHOLDS Nguyen Thuy Linh* College of Economics, Hue University Abstract: This paper focuses on examining the key factors affecting the living standards of Vietnam at the household-level in 2010. In this study, the multiple linear regression model was used to determine the impacts of variables related to the household characteristics, main jobs of heads, and the access of public services on the monthly per capita expenditure of the poor and non-poor based on the data from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey 2010. The empirical findings indicate that in 2010 the expenditure per capita of the poor and non-poor households was affected by many factors, including education and qualification level, region, ethnicity, size of household, working member proportion and water source. However, the empirical study shows that although employment sector was one of the determinants of per capita expenditure of the non-poor households, it had an insignificant impact on per capita expenditure of the poor households. Keywords: Vietnam, poverty, poor and non-poor household, regression models, monthly per capita expenditure 1 Introduction Poverty is one of the severe problems which the Vietnamese government has been solving as an important poverty alleviation policy. Thanks to the government policies and programs and the efforts of poor people to escape from poverty, Vietnam has made impressive achievements with this issue. According to the assessments of the United Nations, Vietnam had fulfilled Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 in extreme poverty reduction and hunger eradication in 2010, sooner than the target of 2015. The poverty headcount ratio sharply declined from in 1993 to in 2008. Moreover, the results achieved in curbing the malnutrition rate in children under five were also positive, dropping from 44%
