Abstract |
We use the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys from 1992-93 and 1997-98 to examine inequality between urban and rural areas in Vietnam. Real per capita household consumption expenditure (RPCE) is our measure of well being. We apply a quantile regression decomposition technique to analyze the difference between the urban and rural distributions of log RPCE. Most of the difference between the upper tails of the distributions is due to differences in the marginal effects of covariates such as age or education rather than differences in the covariates themselves, but the opposite is true in the lower tails. Interesting regional and time effects are also identified. |