Personal Well - Being during Growth

This paper considers the relative importance of improvements in economic status in explaining improvements in non-monetary measures of well-being during Vietnam's economic boom in the 1990s. This study finds that improvements in economic status can explain virtually all of the 20 percent increase in schooling attainment and most of the observed improvements in child nutrition and declines in child labor for the poorest half of the population. In contrast, improvements in economic status can explain little of the observed changes in adult health. This study illustrates that the relationship between well-being and economic status is neither simple nor monotone. Thus, the debate over the ability of improvements in economic status to affect well-being needs to be nuanced to a country's particular situation and reliance on economic status alone to measure poverty may neglect important aspects of well-being.