Challenges in identifying the beneficiaries of the poverty reduction strategy in Northern Mountains of Vietnam: the case of Xuan Phong and Tu Ly communes, Hoa Binh Province

In many developing countries, poverty alleviation programs have been implemented since the 1980’s and 1990’s, and will be continued into the next decades. The emerging question is why “poverty issues” still exist for such a long time and do challenge not only the Vietnamese government but also many countries all over the world. One may ask if poverty reduction strategies, applied in Vietnam and other countries, are suited to the real poverty situation, and if they are sustainable. This paper is based on a research to investigate the nature of government’s interventions as a “poverty reduction strategy”, at Tu Ly and Xuan Phong communes in Hoa Binh province. Vietnam’s official poverty identification method and participatory poverty assessment of people are applied. This study does claim that the currently “inappropriate definition of poverty” is one of keys problems at the roots of the lack of obvious success of the ongoing strategy.