Adolescent Schooling and Work in Vietnam Post Doi Moi

Sara Peracca, Population Council
Soumya Alva, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Vietnam has been experiencing a period of economic change over the last 15 years. The extent to which adolescents have been affected by this change is in many ways still uncertain. This paper investigates the role of three general groups of determinants: individual characteristics, family characteristics, and community factors, to understand their influence on decision-making regarding schooling, domestic duties and income-generating activities of boys and girls. To disentangle the relationship between an adolescent’s work and schooling, we examine four possible outcomes: 1) continued schooling, 2) dropping out and working, 3) working but continuing schooling, or 4) neither working nor going to school. We use data collected in 1999 by the Population Council, which includes information from 2,126 adolescents aged 13-22, and 24 community surveys. The study included six of Vietnams 61 provinces, which covered a range of abiotic, biotic, and cultural factors in the three regions of the country.