Xiang Zhou and Yu Xie (2015) Intergenerational social mobility in China

In China as well as other post-socialist countries, the emergence of markets provided abundant opportunities for the old elites to convert their political power into physical capital, thus making socioeconomic status far more inheritable than before. Meanwhile, a more market-driven reward system spurred a sharp increase in income inequality, thereby equipping upper-class families with more resources and incentives to pass their economic advantages on to their offspring. The abolition of egalitarian educational policies, moreover, severely limited the channel of upward mobility for children of socioeconomically disadvantaged families. A combination of these processes may well explain the consolidation of status hierarchy and its influence on social fluidity.

Absolute rates of mobility, especially of upward mobility, have grown substantially from the cohort born in the 1950s to that born in the 1970s. This growth, however, has been entirely driven by the force of industrialization—that is, the placement of an increasingly larger share of children of farming origin into nonfarming occupations. When the farm sector is excluded, both the rise in upward mobility and the decline in class immobility disappear... Given that industrialization and rural-urban migration have sped up in China during the same period, this finding accords with our hypothesis that... the boundary between agriculture and other sectors tends to be more permeable in rapidly industrializing countries than in advanced industrial societies.

Xiang Zhou and Yu Xie (2015) Market Transition, Industrialization, andSocial Mobility Trends in Post-Revolution China

Edmund Malesky and Jonathan London (2014) State-led development in Vietnam

Although we lack counterfactual evidence, it appears likely that SOEs were more often beneficiaries, rather than engines, of growth. Recent analyses of the role of the state sector in Vietnam have demonstrated [...] profound underperformance. As Pincus et al. 2012 demonstrate, SOEs in Vietnam can no longer claim to be the vanguard of the working class, at least in a numerical sense, as they account for only 11% of employment and have actually seen net employment drop by 22% between 2006 and 2010. Growth decompositions show that the state sector accounted for only 19% and 8% of GDP and industrial growth, respectively, between 2000 and 2010. Moreover, given their tremendous advantages, SOE contributions to export have been absurdly small, with most exporting accomplished by small-scale farmers and foreign investors. From textiles (Vinatex) to shipbuilding (Vinashin), Vietnamese SOEs have failed to be competitive on world markets. TFP studies by ownership in Vietnam have not been credible, because they fail to properly account for the contribution of free land and cheap capital to SOEs’ bottom line. For now, London’s (2013) characterization of Vietnam’s poorly performing industrial policy as “chaebol dreaming” remains apt.

With even modest assumptions about these cheap inputs, the state sector seems to have been a net drag on the Vietnamese economy. Three distortions have been documented: First, even though SOEs have not been successful at exporting in their core competencies, they are protected in those core competencies by Group A investment restrictions on private entry and phase-in requirements on WTO tariff-reduction obligations (Auffret 2003). Second, protections in core businesses, cheap land to rent to private producers, and cheap capital have generated tremendous cash flow that SOEs have funneled into subsidiary investment projects in unrelated businesses, as SOE managers seek to maximize their individual revenue. Vinashin, for instance, had 445 subsidiary businesses and 20 joint ventures, which ranged from real estate to hotels and karaoke. These sideline businesses crowd out more dynamic and entrepreneurial businesses (Nguyen & Freeman 2009). Third, Phan & Coxhead (2013) demonstrate adverse effects of these policies on labor markets, showing that state-sector activity has both depressed returns to skills in nonstate sectors and crowded out more skill-intensive forms of private-sector growth. The effect arises directly from the privileged role of the state sector and the lack of oversight to ensure meritocratic hiring. Because SOEs are capital intensive and protected, the returns to skills in SOEs are higher than in the private sector. Therefore, employment in SOEs is highly coveted. Nevertheless, hiring into SOEs is based on nonmarket mechanisms, such as familial connections, relationships, and outright corruption. Those without such connections have less incentive to invest in high-level skills, leading to lower-quality labor available for private-sector producers.

Critical to the debates about a new economic model is the demonstration by fine-grained scholarship that SOEs are remarkably unproductive relative to nonstate competition. Furthermore, scholars have shown that the greatest periods of growth and poverty reduction occurred when the state sector was at its weakest. In Vietnam, the 2001–2006 boom was correlated with robust growth in private investment; the post-2007 decline correlates with the return of SOEs.

Edmund Malesky and Jonathan London (2014) The political economy of development in China and Vietnam

Jane R.W. Fisher, Huong Thu Thi Tran and TuanTran (2007) Mental health during and after pregnancy and links to socioeconomic conditions

There is emerging evidence that poor mental health is common in women in the postpartum year in Vietnam. Two detailed investigations using psychological autopsies to investigate maternal deaths (defined as those occurring during pregnancy or up to 42 days postpartum) in ten provinces have found that 8% to 16.9% are by suicide, which is exceptionally high by world standards [16,17]. Fisher et al. [18] found that 32.7% of 506 women attending immunisation clinics with their six week old babies scored in the clinical range of >12 on a translated and culturally verified version of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale [EDS] and 19% expressed explicit ideas that they did not want to go on living. Tran Tuan et al. [19] found that 20% of the 2000 mothers of six to eighteen month old infants surveyed for the Vietnam arm of the Young Lives Project, an investigation of childhood poverty, met screening criteria for psychiatric clinical caseness on the locally validated WHO SRQ 20. Both of these studies surveyed representative samples of women who had recently given birth. Given that depression during pregnancy is a risk factor for depression after childbirth, these data indicate that antenatal depression might also be common in Vietnamese women.

[In this study's cohort] higher EDS scores indicating lower mood were associated with psychological and social adversity including experiencing criticism and coercion in the intimate partnership, overcrowded living conditions, low security of employment and unwelcome pregnancy. Although few women reported symptoms of sufficient severity to suggest clinically significant disturbance, these data indicate that these factors may contribute cumulatively to causing more severe mood disturbance and associated disability.

Jane R.W. Fisher, Huong Thu Thi Tran and TuanTran (2007) Relative socioeconomic advantage and mood during advanced pregnancy in women in Vietnam,  International Journal of Mental Health Systems 1: 3

Nguyen Thi Nguyet Minh (2012) Migrant domestic workers in Hanoi

'... the rural-urban differentiation has been increasing and the movement of rural migrants into domestic service and their experiences at work are part of this process. The rural domestic workers migrated as a result of the rural-urban disparity within Vietnam. In the course of migration, they were again confronted with a hierarchical order in the urban labor market, being channelled into its lower-end sectors with demeaning occupations like domestic work. Working in the intimate home sphere of urban families, the domestic workers experienced intensely this rural-urban hierarchy to an even greater degree. It was there that their rural personhood was consumed, scrutinized, supervised, and looked down on at the same time. It was there that they were relegated to their proper place and expected to serve. The social relations within domestic service in Vietnam thus represent a major shift from the ideology of an equal and classless society of the state socialist period, which the country still pursues in theory.

The migratory experiences of the domestic workers showed contradictions. As migrants, they aspired to improve their life or the life chances of their children by migrating to the city. Yet they were confronted with a pronounced hierarchy in the urban workplace, which reinforced their marginalized status. Young migrant domestic workers might wish to escape from the restrictions of village life, yet were even more highly controlled in the city. It was indeed a case of thwarted aspirations. On the other hand, in order to be able to provide for their family, many domestic workers had to leave it; to be able to bring their children up, they were supposed to devote themselves to the care of other people’s children. They were not in a position to “both live with (their) family and support it.” In the words of Mary Romero, they are “restricted to the most basic ‘mothering’ agenda of sending money home to house, feed and clothe their children” while helping urban families give their children better nurturing. This arguably “determines child-rearing and socialization while reproducing class differences,” further accentuating the existing rural-urban gap.'

Nguyen Thi Nguyet Minh (2012) '“Doing Ô Sin” Rural Migrants Negotiating Domestic Work in Hà Nội', Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 7(4): 32-62.

Jee Young Kim (2004) Social structure in the mid 1990s

‘[I]n the mid 1990s, northern Vietnamese society had an occupational hierarchy roughly in the order of state-sector jobs, off-farm self-employment, and private farmers. A small occupational elite in jobs such as administrations (0.7 per cent) and professionals (3.5 per cent) and a middle tier of relatively better-off workers (24.8 per cent) existed alongside the vast majority of the population at the bottom of the hierarchy, who worked as farmers (71 per cent).’

Jee Young Kim (2004) Political capital, human capital, and intergenerational occupational mobility in Northern Vietnam Link

Ian Coxhead and Diep Phan (2013) Returns on state employment

'What both [state-owned enterprises] and civil administration have in common... is access to rents, which when distributed among their workers, generate potential for incomes that are higher than the earnings of equivalent workers in competitive industries.

[S]tate sector firms are far more intensive in their use of educated workers than are non-state firms... [T]he proportion of workers in non-state firms with a college degree remains extremely low (1.8% in 2008) by comparison with state firms (30%).

In 1993, workers in the state sector earned less on average than workers in the non-state sector. But this was prior to the implementation of most market and labor reforms; since then, they have earned about 40% more per hour than non-state workers.'

Ian Coxhead and Diep Phan (2013) Princelings and paupers? State employment and the distribution of human capital investments among Vietnamese households Link

Thomas Heberer (2003) Who became entrepreneurs in the transition

'Former white-collar employees and managers of state or collective firms formed in our study [interviews carried out in 1996-1998 with 202 Vietnamese entrepreneurs throughout the country born 1940s - 1960s] the primary group of private entrepreneurs (managers 12.8%, white collar staffs 38.3%). This corresponds with a study carried out by the National Political Academy Ho Chi Minh (Central Party School) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), according to which 42.7% of the entrepreneurs came from the state sector (civil servants, cadres). In 1991 a Swedish-Vietnamese study came to similar conclusions according to which the figure for former civil servants in the urban areas was 48% (in rural areas about 20%). This group of people not only possesses the best access to government resources and also to premises for production or raw materials, but also has good relationships with state or collective companies as well as to the authorities. With those advantages they have the right prerequisites to found their own firms, into which flow governmental resources as well as relationships with suppliers and customers from the former place of work. Moreover as a result of their earlier work they have at their disposal specific specialized knowledge.'

'At any rate 23.1% of the fathers of the entrepreneurs interviewed had earlier possessed their own company... [These] 'former capitalists'... emphasized that they had acquired through their earlier entrepreneurial activity knowledge and skills which had come of very good use in their renewed entrepreneurial activity. Furthermore a part of this group possessed sufficient capital which they had brought into secure keeping after the communist victory in 1975, and which could now be brought into use as starting capital. Capital and knowledge made possible the development of larger companies.'

Thomas Heberer (2003) Private Entrepreneurs in China and Vietnam: Social and Political Functioning of Strategic Groups Link

Jonathan Pincus and John Sender (2008) Surveying employment for the study of poverty

'Like poverty studies in the United States, the conventional approach favors demographic and geographical explanations and downplays the role of class and gender discrimination in the labor market... Yet the structure of Vietnam Living Standard Survey (VLSS)/Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) questionnaires precludes a serious consideration of the role of wage employment in reducing poverty.'

'More information on wage and other forms of employment is needed to gain a better understanding of poverty dynamics in Vietnam, as elsewhere. Priority should be given to the implementation of a comprehensive labor force survey that accounts for seasonality and collects information on wages, working conditions, security, sectoral composition, skill acquisition, mobility, and women's position in the labor market. Surveys focusing on women working as casual and seasonal agricultural wage laborers and as domestic servants are urgently needed to make antipoverty programs more relevant to the needs of the poor. In our estimation these surveys should be assigned a higher priority than the production of poverty headcounts based on detailed expenditure surveys. Not only are these estimates notoriously error prone, but they also provide only limited information on the causes of poverty. In the absence of detailed labor market information, government officials, aid donors, and academics have tended to overemphasize individual household characteristics and geography at the expense of the structural features of the economy that condition most people's access to better paid and more stable employment.' 

Jonathan Pincus and John Sender (2008) Quantifying Poverty in Vietnam: Who Counts? Link