these shocks (Ravaillon and van de Walle 2008). A much longer and intensified tradition and experience with collectivized agriculture and local networking have helped them to cope.
Case studies in North and South of Vietnam have shown that the province level Gini coefficient of land ownership declines over time. The decrease is mainly attributable to the south where it fell from 0.58 to 0.50 and started from a much higher level of inequality than in the north, which remained constant at around 0.37. As land-tenure reform is only one major element to transforming rural society, research cannot easily provide answers on the question of how much inequality is attributable to the land factor and how much to other factors? In general, socioeconomic disparities have increased within and among rural communities, most markedly in lowland rice areas or villages close to towns where structural reforms are occurring hand in hand with economic diversification (Henin 2002). Beyond single reports on increasing landlessness in South Vietnam, there is no supportive evidence on sharply rising income or consumption inequality in rural areas (Ravaillon and van de Walle 2008).
What might be expected as a future outcome of tenure reform on distributional issues are intergenerational problems triggered by relatively high population growth, as it is often the young households consisting of just married couples having left their parents’ homestead who lack access to land (Beckman 2001). Land legislation thus cannot be separated from family law because it provide orientation in cases of inheritance.