If one is looking for an organization that will be responsive to community needs, stimulate economic growth, and raise people’s income,
cooperatives should be an obvious choice (Calkins & Ngo, 2005; Larocque et al., 2002). This paper investigates whether the households’
income is affected by the access to cooperatives for the case of Phong Dien district, Can Tho city of Vietnam. Data used are directly
collected from 250 households that are both participating (120 observations) and not participating in the cooperatives in Truong Long, Tan
Thoi, Nhon Ai and Nhon Nghia communes. By using the Probit model, the findings show that there are three statistically significant factors
affecting the ability of farm households to participate in the cooperatives at the 1 percent level including land area, distance to market center,
and education level. In addition, the PSM model analysis suggests that the average income of cooperative members is significantly higher
than that of non-members, about 40.880 million VND/year at the significance level of 1 percent. The empirical results imply that being a
cooperative member is a significant contributory factor toward an increase in household income. Based on the research findings, several
recommendations to improve the households’ income are proposed