Is There an Informal Employment Penalty in Food Security? Evidence from Rural Vietnam

In this paper, we investigate the association between informal non-farm wage employment and household food security in rural Vietnam. The data for our analyses come from a nationally representative panel dataset of 1390 rural households from Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey. We conduct multivariate regression analysis using robust quantitative tools to show that informal employment is associated with a reduction in the consumption of nutritious foods. Our analysis also shows that informal employment reduces consumption of vegetables and fruits, using both the calorie- and expenditure-based shares of food groups.