Challenges of Vietnam's population
In the world, fertility rates in most continents are continuously decreasing compared to replacement fertility levels in European countries, Korea, and Japan, leading to a shortage of labor resources, problems of aging populations and care for the elderly. It is predicted that labor shortage will be widespread worldwide after 2055, affecting unsustainable human development, a leading challenge for humanity in the 21st century.
MSc. Mai Trung Son, Deputy Director of the Department of Population Scale and Family Planning, Department of Population (Ministry of Health) said: In Vietnam, many achievements have been achieved in population work in recent times, in The population growth rate has been successfully controlled, reaching replacement fertility since 2006 and continuing to maintain it until now. Our country has entered the period of golden population structure since 2007 and has just passed milestone of 100 million people, creating opportunities to accumulate resources to increase investment in social security, health care, education, and employment in the future. The stature and physical strength of Vietnamese people have improved. Average life expectancy is increasing rapidly, from 65.5 years in 1993 to 74.5 years in 2023, higher than many countries with the same per capita income ...
Although Vietnam has achieved many achievements, there are still many difficulties and challenges that are directly affecting life, society and the sustainable development of Vietnam in the present and future. That is the risk of not achieving the goal of maintaining replacement fertility levels nationwide, with a trend of low fertility rates appearing; The population is aging rapidly and will soon become a country with an aging population; The sex ratio at birth remains high, leading to the risk of gender imbalance...
Pressure from life, finances, not wanting to be tied down, and non-traditional notions of marriage are the things that make many young women hesitate to get married. There is a reality today that many young people are not interested in getting married. Although they know that settling down is only a matter of time, there are many reasons why these young people delay getting married. Besides, unlike those who want to get married but are still worried about economic issues or responsibilities after marriage, many young people tend to choose to be single because they like freedom.
According to Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cu - former Director of the Institute of Population and Social Issues, National Economics University, the age of marriage among young people is also gradually increasing. From 1989 to 2022, the average age at first marriage for men increases from 24.4 to 29 years old. During this same period, the age of marriage for women increased from 23.2 to 24.1 years old. Meanwhile, the marriage rate decreased significantly. Specifically, from 1989 to 2019, the rate of married men aged 20 - 24 decreased from 37.6% to 19.6%, which is nearly a half. As for women, these rates also decreased from 57.5% to 44.3%. Marrying late and marrying less is one of the reasons why fertility has decreased by half over the past 30 years.
“The more society develops, the more diverse a child's needs become, leading to material worries when giving birth, wanting to have a stable economy before having children, the development of science and medicine helps the child mortality rate. Deaths have decreased very strongly, so parents do not need to have compensatory births, reserve births... there are many reasons why the birth rate has decreased", Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cu gave the reason.
Improve the quality of human resources
According to statistics from the General Statistics Office (Ministry of Planning and Investment), from 2009 to now, the birth rate has increased slightly, or decreased slightly around (2.1 children) and by 2023, according to the latest statistics. , each Vietnamese woman has 1.9 children, the lowest ever. Vietnam is facing certain difficulties, when the goal is to firmly maintain the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman by 2030, with a population of about 104 million people.
A prolonged low birth rate will leave many consequences such as rapid population aging, labor shortage, affecting social security... Even in Vietnam's population forecast to 2069, in the scenario Low fertility rate, Vietnam will face the risk of an average population growth rate of -0.04% in 2059. Meanwhile, if in the average fertility scenario, 10 years later (2069) , this number just reached 0.
Mr. Le Thanh Dung - Director of the Population Department (Ministry of Health) said that replacement fertility rate is the average fertility rate of a woman in her entire life giving birth to enough children to perform the reproductive function for her. give birth and maintain (race). Falling fertility rates will affect the structure and size of the population, reducing the working-age population and accelerating the aging process...
Without policy adjustments and timely solutions to bring fertility back to replacement level, Vietnam's future population will gradually decrease..., slowing down the process of socio-economic development. country's association
The population aging process in many countries and Vietnam is happening very quickly, leading to many challenges in terms of decline and shortage of human resources in general, and human resources in the public sector in particular. That requires State management agencies to have appropriate policies and solutions to overcome the current population aging situation in Vietnam.
"When the population is in the "golden population" structural period, the number of people of working age is large, so human resources to serve the economy are abundant, we even export labor. However, when entering the "aging population" period, the number of elderly people increases and the number of people of working age decreases, posing the problem of shortage of human resources for socio-economic development. The shortage of human resources when entering the age of aging population has occurred in many developed countries such as Germany, France, Japan, Korea... and is a lesson for developing countries like Vietnam. . The shortage of human resources will create difficulties in socio-economic development, creating complex and long-term consequences. With the current rapid population aging rate, policies are needed to cope with the problem of shortage of human resources for national development," Mr. Le Thanh Dung analyzed.
The Ministry of Health is proposing a Population Law Project that does not specifically regulate the number but gives the right to decide how many children to have for each couple. The bill does not set specific regulations on the number of children for each couple. Instead, the bill will give each family the right to make decisions, along with the responsibility to care for and raise their children well.
According to the Ministry of Health, giving parents the right to decide on the number of children will help deal with the situation of fertility rates falling too low, leading to population aging and negative impacts on economic and social development. , as well as ensuring national security. The Ministry of Health announced that the bill aims to adjust fertility levels and orient marriage and family education for young people. Employers are responsible for creating conditions for employees to access information and use population services on family planning appropriate to the working environment.
In addition, a number of solutions to improve the quality of human resources in the current population aging process have also been proposed, such as improving population policy, including maintaining a reasonable, long-term replacement fertility rate. the period of "golden population" structure, slowing down the population aging process, ensuring human resources for national development; develop population services, improve the quality of human resources in accordance with the population aging period; build and perfect the social security system, ensuring sustainable development of human resources; Develop diverse employment policies and develop the labor market in accordance with the population aging period.
