Practical notes and documentation for Vietnam’s household surveys, enterprise surveys, and population censuses
As it can sometimes be hard to find this information online, here is some documentation for various household surveys in Vietnam. One note of caution about the household surveys, at least from 2002 onward: they do a poor job of enumerating recent migrants. See Pincus and Sender (2008). This may or may not matter for you depending on your research question. For example, if you're interested in how foreign manufacturing jobs are changing labour markets in Vietnam, you probably want to avoid the household surveys since such a large share of workers in these firms are recent migrants.
2002 VHLSS household questionnaire 2002 VHLSS general introduction
2002 and 2004 VHLSS basic information
2004 VHLSS household questionnaire (EN) 2004 VHLSS household questionnaire (VN) 2004 VHLSS Handbook
2006 VHLSS household questionnaire (EN) 2006 VHLSS commune questionnaire (EN)
2008 VHLSS household questionnaire (EN) 2008 VHLSS handbook
2010 VHLSS household questionnaire 2010 VHLSS handbook
2012 VHLSS household & commune questionnaires (EN) 2012 VHLSS handbook
2014 VHLSS household & commune questionnaires (EN)
2018 VHLSS household questionnaire (EN)
These annual surveys, sometimes also referred to as censuses (although they should not be confused with the Establishment Censuses that are done about every 5 years), start in 2000. They cover all firms in Vietnam registered as an enterprise. However, an important point that is missed by many researchers using the micro data is that although all firms are covered, only some firms receive the full length questionnaire while the rest are "listed" and receive a very short questionnaire. This partly explains the confusion over whether this is a survey or a census. It is a census in the sense that all enterprises are covered with basic information, but a survey in the sense that only some enterprises are given the full length survey.
What is even more confusing is that in the micro data given to most researchers, imputed values have been included for many variables for firms that were not directly asked the question. That is, the listed enterprises have many variables imputed for them. In my opinion, this imputed data should not be used.
For all years, all state, foreign, and large private domestic firms were given the full length survey. Starting in 2003, a subset of small private domestic firms were given the survey and the rest were listed. The definition of a small private domestic firm changes over time and provinces and the set of questions included for the listed enterprises also changes over time. Be careful that you are using actual data and not imputed values!
Lastly, note that different researchers often have different versions of the same datasets. This makes using consistent cleaning rules across researchers difficult. Take a look at your data carefully.
Here is some associated documentation:
Province-year cutoffs for defining a small private domestic firm, 2003 to 2017 [last updated 5 February 2026]
Questions by year for listed enterprises, 2003 to 2017 [last updated 14 October 2025]
In the enterprise census data, there is a module about the source country of investment. Here is, to my knowledge, the correct set of country names and codes, as provided to me by the GSO.
Samples of Vietnam’s 1989, 1999, 2009, and 2019 population censuses, along with variable descriptions and supporting documentation, are available through IPUMS International. Some research questions require larger samples or more detailed geographic identifiers than those available through IPUMS; see Getting access to Vietnamese data for information about those sources. For tools to compare geographic units across census years, see Data and tools I’ve created.