Should we call it a (middle) class? A socio-economic exploration of the Vietnamese middle-income group

By combining household survey data on the economic and social characteristics of middle-income earners and primary survey data on their subjective perceptions, we show that the so-called Vietnamese 'middle class' is strongly heterogeneous in terms of income, occupation and status and includes a large percentage of highly vulnerable households facing high individual risk not covered by social protection. Although marginally driven by public sector employment and formal private sector expansion, it shares common traits that might help consolidate class identification and could lead to more formally organised political influence if the political sphere becomes more open in the future.