Impact Assessment and Micro-Simulations of Different Policy Options for Child Benefit in Viet Nam

This study was aimed to estimate how cash transfer to children could help to reduce their poverty as well as to increase access to education, health and other material life conditions. We find that cash transfers would have a positive effect of income on school enrolment: a one percent increase in per capita income could lead to a 0.0394 percent increase in the probability of children’s primary and secondary school enrolment. In addition, increased income resulted from cash transfers could significantly increase out-of-pocket (OOP) spending on education: a one percent increase in per capita income could help households increase OOP spending on education and OOP spending on education excluding tuition fee by 0.883 percent and 0.454 percent, respectively. Finally, the simulations show that generally the transfer amount of VND 70,000/month/child (which was merely 2.31% of GDP per capita in 2012) could increase the school enrolment rate of children by 0.125 percent. However, there were no significant effects of cash transfers on health care contacts (both impatience and outpatience) and out-of-pocket spending on health care.