Measuring the Impact of Cash Crops on Household Expenditure and Poverty in Rural Viet Nam

Abstract

This paper measures the impacts of cash crops on household consumption expenditure and poverty in rural Vietnam using data from Viet Nam Household Living Standard Surveys in 2002 and 2004. It is found that revenuesfrom cash crops have positive and statistically significant impacts on per capita expenditure. More specifically, an increase of one Viet Nam Dong (VND) in rice revenues leads to an increase of 0.019 VND in per capita expenditure, and the corresponding figures for revenues of annual crops, perennial crops, and fruits are 0.038, 0.040 and 0.036 respectively. As a result, the crop sales have positive and statistically significant impacts on poverty reduction of the crop-growing households and rural population. The poverty-reducing impacts are found to be positive for all the three Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measures