Tháp tuổi Việt Nam và vấn đề giáo dục

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Bài này mới đăng trên báo Vietnam Financial Review, nay tôi để ra blog bản chưa qua biên tập. Nội dung chính là ảnh hưởng của vấn đề dân số học lên câu chuyện giáo dục ở Việt Nam.

The flattened age pyramid and the education challenge

Demographic attributes are among the most persistent, most predictable socio-economic characteristics of a country, compared to other variables such as GDP, investment or consumption growth. Given the central role of population in most society-wide phenomena, it should be a key indicator in all forward-looking strategic planning for both public and private purposes. The failure to fully acknowledge this point can be very costly, as illustrated in the case of Vietnam’s education system in recent years.

Vietnam has a unique twentieth century demographic history, with vast impacts of the half-century long wars, economic underdevelopment, a post-war population boom in the late 70s and early 80s, followed by a mild population restriction policy. All these historical traits leave unmistakable marks on the demographic growth and composition. While some of their effects have long been under consideration by policy makers, others seem to be overlooked, leaving humongous consequences.

The reunified Vietnam since 1975 experienced a surge in population similar to the baby boom in the West, somewhat despite economic hardship in the early 1980s. Even though population growth was later kept under control by a series of financial and occupational disincentives against high-fertility families, the age pyramid quickly expanded at the bottom for several generations of children. This particular phenomenon promises a huge demand for education when those children reach their school age in the 1990s and 2000s.

The population growth was coupled with a strong push of urbanization in a typical emerging economy. The urban population share rises about two percentage points a year, with most urban immigrant families focusing on giving their children a better chance. That creates enormous demand pressure on the education infrastructure of large cities.

However predictable it was, that demand trend has not been dealt with properly. The supply side remains rigid until recently, partly due to inadequate national education planning, partly due to stringent bureaucratic red tapes preventing the private sector to step in and fill the gap. In cities, the number of public schools has not grown, while their capacity improved only by a small fraction, mostly in unavoidable situations. Under strong pressure, educational entrepreneurs have slowly been allowed into the picture, first in joint venture with public institutions, and since a few years in independent businesses. Nevertheless, the high costs of licenses, both in time and in other means, have kept the private share of the market relatively low.

More importantly, supply of skilled labor in this profession has not seen much improvement. While education schools may make progress in teaching quality, since the 1990s the quality of incoming students to those schools deteriorates sharply as better students can now choose more lucrative career paths, as opposed to be assigned to a university by a central authority. Consequently, graduating batches of teachers since the late 1990s barely compare to previous generations, many of whom soon reached retirement age. Together with a stagnate capacity of education supply, its real quality has been impoverished by the self-selection out of a low salary career.

Education quality thus starts its decline since the late 1990s, when high, growing demand meets low capacity, low quality supply. Classroom size usually reaches more than 50, and the rationing process in education creates many ugly side effects, such as extra-hour classes by the very same teachers on the same topics for additional remunerations, or student-screening prerequisites starting even before school age. Government-enforced quality control lacks a serious, non-superficial monitoring system, and reform attempts have been staunched by fervent conservative opponents. Market forces, on the other hand, are dysfunctional as too few private schools manage to emerge to bridge the supply-demand gap. Schooling does not mean the same as a generation before, and better-off parents seek all means to support their children with adequate education, including sending them abroad at an earlier and earlier age.

Many experts point out that the remedy lies in the liberalization of the education market to domestic and foreign private entities. Clean and clear competition with enough private competitors who truly value their clients – parents and children – would improve the system and may keep it in check against adverse side effects. In fact, not only should private schools be allowed to freely enter the market, they should also be partly subsidized with land use, since the value they create for the society can largely exceed what the entrepreneurs can reap in return. However, similar to many reform policies, liberalization is always met with a strong group of opponents, be it on ideological, practical or business ground.

While a full-scale liberalization may be out of the near horizon, the education sector is still a highly profitable area of investment, even with the current high fixed costs of starting a business. Young middle-class parents coming from the first wave of baby boom in the 1970s are quick to realize the education conundrum their children are facing now, and will not wait for the government’s intervention to improve their children’s lot. They are already contributing heavily, in money and in time, to the public school education of their children, but they would also be willing to spend more to get them a better, care-free education in private schools. High growth breeds not only more demand of education, but also demand for higher quality that can be more assuredly met by eager, dynamic education investors than the State. The next few years will predictably see new surge in private education institutions, giving the society more, better choices.

Đe dọa của loài heo

Đây là nguyên bản của bài viết mới đây của tôi trên Vietnam Financial Review. Ý tưởng dựa theo một số bài viết của VoxEU, ADB, và FAO.

The Pork Peril

The swine influenza outbreak in Mexico is not a good sign for any one. Since the first fatality on April 13, it has claimed more than a hundred lives after just two weeks, and the death toll does not seem to slow down. In a world with a raging financial and economic crisis that has just foreshadowed a lingering food crisis, a health crisis may have the worst ever impacts.

All the financial and economic news have driven the food crisis out of media coverage. While we are no longer at the peak of food prices as back in 2008, the food market is yet to return to normalcy. Recent reports from FAO and the ADB warn that Asia, and thus the whole world, are still not too far from food shortage. Cereal price still remains at a level comparable to the later part of 2007, which is 50% above the decreasing trend of food prices during more than a decade before the recent price surge.

The subsistence need of the poor means that demand for staple in developing countries would not drop much, even when the economy is heavily hit by the current crisis. In fact, the drop in income can shift consumption from other categories to food, thereby increase food consumption in a hard time, a counterintuitive phenomenon that has happened many times in history.

In light of the food shortage concern, the Mexican influenza is potentially fatal, not only because it is a direct health threat, but also because it menaces to bring the world back to a food shortage chaos that no country could deal with in this economic downturn.

If the novel virus continues to spread, food protectionism would quickly take over the current food trade system. Such policy is well justified by health concerns, as restriction of food and human mobility has been proven the best way to prevent the spread of an epidemic before a vaccine is discovered. But it would also plunge the world back to a state of imbalanced food markets. Food prices would increase substantially, especially in poor, traditionally food-importing countries.

Sizeable developing countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam would face a double disastrous crisis: a contraction of consumption good demand due to the dip in exports, and a contraction of basic food supply. Here, two minuses do not make a plus, as the combined crisis means a drastic blow to the urban poor, the factory workers who suffer from revenue loss and less affordable food. Worse, they would be in contrast with some of their compatriots who could make trade profits out of food price spreads. Deprived of all means, the destitute urbanites would become politically explosive and rebellious. The crisis will escalate.

Even when the swine flu does not become pandemic, the fear of flu itself may already trigger those dire consequences. The dreadful images of the Mexican situation have already prompted many countries to shut their doors on pork imports, reinstitute strict controls on tourists, and prepare to launch radical quarantine campaigns should the malign virus travels to their territory.

It is important to realize the magnitude of this imminent risk, so that appropriate measures could be implemented in time, not only to prevent the spread of the disease but also to assuage the side effects of such prevention. Countries should coordinate on policies facilitating trade and food production in times of need. This is also another reason to include strong temporary subsidy for agricultural products in stimulus packages.

Farmers in Vietnam have had bitter experiences how a chicken disease resulted in human, social and economic tragedies. Let us hope the pig has a brighter destiny.

Source: FAO Food Price Index Data, http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/FoodPricesIndex/en/