How Vietnam Walked Into a Population Emergency

Vietnam’s move to scrap its de facto two-child policy in June was fueled by mounting government concerns as leaders look to avoid severe long-term consequences.

Why It Matters

Vietnam, like many countries, is experiencing a sustained decline in births. The fertility rate fell to 1.91 last year, below the “replacement” threshold of 2.1 births per woman considered necessary to keep a population stable.

The shift follows decades of rapid economic growth since the market reforms of the late 1980s, coupled with rising urban living costs and changing generational attitudes toward family planning.

With immigration levels low, Vietnam is now aging quickly. That means fewer workers to sustain Southeast Asia’s fourth-largest economy and heavier pressure on pensions and health care in the decades to come.

From Population Boom to Control

Vietnam once faced the opposite problem: High fertility rates and poverty drove a baby boom in the 1960s. North Vietnam introduced a two-child norm at the time, later extending it nationwide after the communist takeover of the South in 1975.

In the early 2000s, authorities pushed for replacement-level fertility by 2005, presenting family planning as both a patriotic duty and reflection of collectivist culture, where the needs of society outweighed the desires of the individual.

In June, the government formally abolished the restriction, describing the change as a bid to align with “international practice.” The move echoed China’s own shift away from its one-child policy, which expanded to two children in 2016 and three in 2021.

Vietnamese policymakers consider the population of 101 million to be in a “golden population” phase, where working-age adults outnumber dependents. But the General Statistics Office warns that advantage may not last beyond 2041.

Twilight of ‘Golden Years’

The country is already aging swiftly. Those age 65 and older made up about 9 percent of Vietnam’s population in 2024, per U.N. Population Division statistics, and this share projected to more than double, to 20 percent, by mid-century.

That would place Vietnam in the same “super-aged” category as Japan and South Korea, with China close behind.

The outlook is not certain, given the limited success of regional peers in raising fertility despite years of incentives from cash bonuses and subsidized fertility treatments to mortgage breaks.

Vietnam’s crisis is not yet as severe as Singapore’s or some of East Asia’s lowest-fertility states, but the trend line is moving in the same direction.

“The golden population only appears once for each country, so it is necessary to have a national strategy on employment to adapt to the period,” Le Thanh Dung, director of the health ministry’s Population Department, told state media last year.

He warned that current trends will have “many consequences” for Vietnamese society, from economic development to national defense.

For many Vietnamese, the cost of raising children remains the biggest deterrent. A 2023 estimate in VN Express put the average monthly expense of supporting a child until age 22 at about 15 million dong ($570). That is in a country where the average salary is just $230 a month.

The burden is even heavier in Ho Chi Minh City, where the fertility rate dropped to 1.39 children per woman in 2023, among the lowest in the country.

What’s Next

The government faces steep socioeconomic and cultural headwinds that have frustrated other nations, and whether ending the two-child policy will make a significant difference on the trend remains uncertain.