In the implementation of the Party and State policy “Doi moi”, the General Statistical Office (GSO) has conducted many household living standards survey to collect information on the living standards of all social societies to serve policy-making and socio-economic development planning. From 2002 to 2010, VHLSS are to be conducted (in every two- year) to monitor systematically the living standard of Vietnam's societies and at the same time, to exercise the monitoring and assessment of the implementation of the Comprehensive Poverty Alleviation and Growth Strategy defined in Country Strategy Paper approved by the Government Prime Minister. In addition, these surveys also serve the evaluation of realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Socio-economic Development Goals set out by Vietnamese Government. The 2002 VHLSS included all the keynote contents reflecting the living standards of the population and the basic socio-economic condition of communes/wards that might affect the living standards of the local people. As regards households, it collected data in relation to demographic characteristics of the household members, the education background, professional/ technical level of each member, income, expenditures, use of medical facilities of all kinds, employment, housing and amenity as possession, personal effects, utilities (power and water supply), sanitation and participation in the poverty alleviation programme. As regards communes/wards, it collected a wide rage of information related to demography, nationality, infrastructure, farming, production promotion conditions, non-farming activity and law and order. Household questionnaires and communes/wards questionnaires of the 2002 VHLSS were designed more scientifically to ensure feasibility. They had been, in fact, piloted in Bac Ninh, Binh Dinh and Dong Nai provinces prior to the actual survey. Survey sample were selected, based on the Population and Housing Census 1999. The sample size included 75.000 households representative of the whole country, urban and rural area and 61 provinces. Survey samples were sub-divided into 4 minor samples for the quarterly surveys in 2002 for more thorough data collection in anticipation of the harvests that might somehow get in the way. To provide information on assessment of the living standards in 2001-2002, GSO developed and released the detailed results of the 2002 VHLSS, including relevant statistics and initial analysis. Expenditure related data were synthesized from samples of 30.000 households; others, from samples of 45.000 households. To bring out the changes in the living standards, the 2002 VHLSS results were compared with the results obtained from other living standards surveys, e.g. the 1992-1993 living standards survey (1993 VLSS), the 1993 rich-poor status survey (1993 RPSS), the 1997-1998 living standards surveys (1998 VLSS), the Multipurpose household surveys throughout 1994 to 1997 and 1999 (MHPS) The data on demography, labor, and employment ect… were collected from the 2002 VHLSS, not replace all the data already released from the surveys conducted in this area, but to shed more light on and make more on insightful analyses of the factors affecting the living standards.
