The ethnic minority people in my village are very friendly. A few months ago, I journeyed to Lao Cai, a predominantly ethnic minority area in Vietnam’s Northern Mountains, to supervise a pilot survey. One older man I encountered—typical of many we saw—was a subsistence farmer with minimal education who spoke only his native language and had barely ventured beyond his village.
Members of ethnic minority groups make up 15 percent of the country’s population but account for 70 percent of the extreme poor (measured using a national extreme poverty line). During Vietnam’s two decades of rapid growth, members of ethnic minority groups in the country have experienced overall improvements in their standards of living, but their gains have lagged behind those of the Kinh majority.
The
ethnic
minority
people
in my village are
very
friendly. A few months ago, I journeyed to Lao
Cai
, a
predominantly
ethnic
minority
area in Vietnam’s Northern Mountains, to supervise a pilot survey. One older
man
I encountered—typical of
many
we
saw
—was a subsistence farmer with minimal education who spoke
only
his native language and had
barely
ventured beyond his village.
Members of
ethnic
minority
groups
make
up 15 percent of the country’s population
but
account for 70 percent of the extreme poor (measured using a national extreme poverty line). During Vietnam’s two decades of rapid growth, members of
ethnic
minority
groups in the country have experienced
overall
improvements in their standards of living,
but
their gains have lagged behind those of the
Kinh
majority.