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Vietnamese rural mountains are undergoing a significant transformation process in agriculture-based economy nowadays. A challenge facing ethnic minorities is identifying more appropriate way of life to cope with unpredictable risks associated with agriculture. This paper deals with livelihood diversification by the Dzao, an indigenous ethnic minority group in the Vietnamese Northern Mountains. One hundred and six Dzao households from 11 villages are surveyed with a systematic random sampling. The Simpson diversity index and the Average Agricultural Livelihood Diversification Index are used to measure the livelihood diversification of villages. Eighteen survey questions are developed from six determinants of livelihood diversification such as seasonality, risk strategies, labor markets, credit market failures, asset strategies and coping behavior and adaptation. The results show that livelihood diversification aligns Dzao farmers' goals to the short-term economic feasibility and long-term sustainability. Farmers diversify their livelihood by combining livelihood strategies for agricultural intensification, agricultural extensification and migration. Diversification should range from a temporary change in the household livelihood portfolio (occasional diversification) to a deliberate attempt to optimize the household capacity taking advantage of opportunities and coping with unexpected constraints (strategic diversification). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In Vietnam, illnesses create high out-of-pocket health care expenditures for households. In this study, the burden of illness in the Bavi district, Vietnam is measured based upon individual household health expenditures for communicable and non-communicable illnesses. The focus of the paper is on the relative effect of different illnesses on the total economic burden of health care on households in general and on households that have catastrophic health care spending in particular. Methods: The study was performed by twelve monthly follow-up interviews of 621 randomly selected households. The households are part of the FilaBavi project sample -- Health System Research Project. The heads of household were interviewed at monthly intervals from July 2001 to June 2002. Results: For the population in the Bavi district, communicable illnesses predominate among the episodes of illness and are the reason for most household health care expenditure. This is the case for almost all groups within the study and for the study population as a whole. However, communicable illnesses are more dominant in the poor population compared to the rich population, and are more dominant in households that have very large, or catastrophic, health care expenditure, compared to those without such expenditures. Conclusion: The main findings indicate that catastrophic health care spending for a household is not usually the result of one single disastrous event, but rather a series of events and is related more to "every-day illnesses" in a developing country context than to more spectacular events such as injuries or heart illnesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]