Governmental support and multidimensional poverty alleviation: efficiency assessment in rural areas of Vietnam

This paper provides evidence on the poverty-eradication effect of governmental support, broadly categorised into human support and living support. Following the doubly robust approach and using data collected from 1,538 households of mountainous ethnic minorities, the evidence indicates that current governmental support can help reduce the poor’s multidimensional poverty. However, these supports cannot mitigate all of the deprivations the poor endure. The alleviation impact of human support is observed in education and health deprivations, but that of living support is limited to health deprivation. Employment and living standard deprivations appear to not be significantly influenced by both supports. The results on the effect of human support on education and of living support on health are robust to sensitivity checks, following a novel approach examining violations of unconfoundedness. These findings contribute to the literature on government policy efficacy and suggest a crucial policy adjustment area.