Economic Dimensions of Tet
From: Patrick McAllister
Date: Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 2:16 PM
Hi, I am new to Vietnamese studies and engaged in a project on Tet
Nguyen Dan in Ho Chi Minh City. Does anyone know if there has been work
done on the economic dimensions of Tet (similar perhaps to the 'lunar
new year effect' documented for China)or of sources of economic
statistics and information that might help?
Patrick McAllister
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From: Thomas Jandl
Date: Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 7:48 PM
Two quick ones on Tet:
(1) Inflation. In 2008 especially, inflation skyrocketed. In general, the prices of food and small present items as well as transportation go up as millions of Vietnamese buy presents and travel home. But in 2008, prices didn't come down again after Tet.
(2) Economic turnover. In the industrial zones in and HCMC, Dong Nai and Binh Duong, workers who are tired of the factory conditions stay through Tet to get the bonus, then don't return to work in large numbers after the holidays. I intervied DPI folks and was told 25-30% turnover was normal. That means huge business for recruitment agencies, and significant cost for companies for hiring and training.
_________________________________
Thomas Jandl
School of International Service
American University
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From: Adam Fforde @ UoM
Date: Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 11:57 PM
I saw some very local studies of household budgets some years back (north VN) that suggested that 40-50% of cash spending by rural families took place at festivals, including Tet. Meat consumption from home-reared pigs and poultry was also important (non-cash spending). In some areas at such festivals poor families nutritional status was strongly influenced by these festivals, at which they could eat well, and in some areas had rights to ‘lay phan’ – to take portions of food home. Not sure if that applies to Tet. Such transfers, obviously in some cases large, were I think excluded from some of the large household surveys which therefore ‘under-recorded’ consumption by the poor.
The response I recall about some workers was ‘they’ll be back when there are no chickens left’ (het ga moi ve)
The social wage is the social wage. Who pays for the childcare?
Adam
Dr. Adam Fforde
Principal Fellow, Asia Institute
Sidney Myer Asia Centre
University of Melbourne
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From: Linh Vu
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 12:28 AM
The Vietnamese Household Living Standard surveys (VHLSSs) have information about food expenditure and consumption during holidays including Tet Holiday. So it's possible to estimate the percentage of food consumption spent on holidays.
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From: Adam Fforde
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 3:16 AM
My understanding is that these surveys do not measure consumption that is not market-mediated or ‘consumption of food produced by the consumer’ – ie they do not measure food supplied by somebody else and acquired by the person who eats it through their participation at feasts, thus technically a transfer rather than through a purchase or ‘consumption of own produce’. Am I wrong? My impression was that this was basically because the initial questionnaire design was ignorant of this behaviour, and there was a desire to maintain continuity thereafter, in terms of the measured aggregates, so it was not changed.
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From: Linh Vu
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 5:54 AM
Hi Adam Fforde
The questionnaire didn't ask specifically for the food consumption at feasts. It only distinguished between "bought or bartered" and "self supplied or received". Yet, there was one line for outdoor eating. Thus, it did not exclude specifically food consumption at feasts or at others' houses during festivals (which can be entered in the data as "outdoor meals" that ware "self-supplied or received") but it may lead to some under-measurement in practice.
Linh Vu, Ph.D.
Socio-economic Researcher,
Prosperity Initiative,
Hanoi, Vietnam
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From: Sidel, Mark
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 7:11 AM
Dear Linh Vu,
What's the Prosperity Initiative? (onlist or off - up to you)
Mark Sidel
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From: Adam Fforde
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 1:46 PM
Hi
It would seem to me that it is disingenuous to argue that ‘it may lead to some under-measurement in practice’. A more plausible conclusion is that it certainly will, and does, and that this is deliberate. It should have been corrected when these issues were brought up, which they were some years ago by me and others. At that point a decision was apparently taken not to correct the questionnaire for the reasons I suggested earlier, which is the desire to create measures that are ‘consistent over time’, suitable for publication, despite evidence that they are mis-measuring … This is pretty normal behaviour and shows one reason why people are well advised to view practices of quantitative measure with suspicion, not least as their accuracy is under-policed, as we see here. The incentive is to create a data series suitable for ‘knowledge production’, and this over-rides other incentives. At least so it appears.
Regards
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From: Haughton, Dominique
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 2:01 PM
Greetings and sorry for the relatively late reply to this stream. I have written a paper on Tet expenditures with Phong Nguyen of the General Statistics Office in Hanoi, please let me know if you would like me to send it to you, it is a sizeable file and I hesitate to overload all your mailboxes. All the best, Dominique
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From: Linh Vu
Date: Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 12:00 AM
I just happened to look at the report "Characteristics of the Vietnamese rural economy: Evidence from a 2008 rural household survey in 12 provinces of Vietnam". This survey was conducted in over 3000 households in rural Vietnam in 2008. According to the survey (page 129), Tet expenditure accounts for 6.3 percent of household income. The percentage is 10.4 percent for the lowest income quintile and it is 3.2 percent for the highest income quintile.
Linh Vu