POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER11067Rapid Economic Growth but Rising PovertySegregationWill Viet Nam Meet the SDGs for EquitableDevelopment?Hai-Anh H.DangShatakshee DhongdeMinh DoCuong Viet NguyenObert PimhidzaiWORLD BANK GROUPDevelopment Data GroupPoverty and Equity Global DepartmentFebruary 2025POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 11067AbstractViet Nam is widely regarded as a success story for its impres-particularly those with a larger ethnic minority population.sive cconomic growth and poverty reduction in the last fewThe analysis finds a beneficial impact of economic growthdecades.Yet,recent evidence indicates that the country'son poverty reduction,but this can depend on inequalityeconomic growth has not been uniform.Compiling andlevels.It also finds that greater inequality has had negativeanalyzing new,extensive province-level data from the Viet-effects on cconomic growth but varying negative effects onnam Houschold Living Standards Surveys spanning 2002 todifferent poverty indicators.The paper provides supportive2020 and other data sources,this paper finds within-prov-ince inequality to be much larger than between-provincepolicy makers in Viet Nam should focus on reducing spa-over time.Despite the country's fast poverty reduction,tial disparities and income inequality to attain sustainablethe poor were increasingly segregated in certain provinces,This paper is a product of the Development Data Group,Development Economics and the Poverty and Equity GlobalDepartment.It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contributionto development policy discussions around the world.Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp.The authors may be contacted at hdang@worldbank.org and vietcuong@vnu.edu.vn.Produced by the Research Support Team