Cash Transfers For The Most Vulnerable and Poor Elderly People in Vietnam: An Ex-Ante Impact Evaluation

Abstract:This paper applies micro-simulation techniques with a household survey, i.e., Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) in 2010, to examine how a cash transfer program would have been able to help reduce poverty of the elderly. The results show that any cash transfer programs could have reduced poverty for older people. The paper also shows that cash transfer would help reduce expenditure inequality as the Gini coefficients for the whole population as well as for older people at different age thresholds would reduce when cash transfer was introduced. With a special focus on expansion of the current cash transfer program to older Vietnamese people, the paper provides scenario-based micro-simulation results for costs and poverty rate reduction for different programs covering groups of older people at different ages, and the results show that the total cost would be in line with that in many other developing countries.