According to statistics in 2023, the replacement fertility rate in Vietnam is estimated at 1.96 children/woman, at an all-time low and is expected to continue to decrease.
On December 10, at the launching ceremony of the National Population Action Month and the celebration of Vietnam Population Day, Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan stated that Vietnam is facing a rapid population aging process and will soon pass the golden population period.
According to experts, the basic cause of population aging is due to increased average human life expectancy and reduced replacement fertility.
Similar to some countries in the world, today, many young Vietnamese people tend to have few children and are afraid to have children due to reasons such as: economic conditions, age of marriage, work pressure, life, time to take care of children...
Ms. Tran Lan (31 years old, housewife) said: "I got married at the age of 27, gave birth to my first daughter at the age of 28. Because my parents are still of working age, after giving birth, I was forced to quit my job and stay home to take care of my young child."
Because of this decision, economic pressure fell on the husband and young family. This is one of the main reasons why she did not dare to continue having a second child.
"After the child was born, the family's expenses increased a lot, including diapers, clothes, health care, kindergartens... When the child reached school age, the cost of food, schoolwork, entertainment, extracurricular activities... in Hanoi cost tens of millions of VND per month. My family has to spend frugally to have enough money to pay," said Ms. Lan.
The pressure to earn money and take care of children made the couple have no time to rest, take care of themselves or develop their careers. The two decided to stop at one child to have the conditions to raise and give their child the best life.
On the other hand, many young people choose to marry late, not getting married is also the reason for the difficulty of having children, even infertility.
Mr. Tran Tu (32 years old, IT employee) got married in 2022 but has not been able to have children yet. He said that the pressure of work and life causes fatigue and stress every day, plus age is quite large, making it difficult for him and his wife to conceive.
"With the money saved, my husband and I decided to use IVF (in- the ong). However, this method requires good health, high costs, and does not guarantee 100% effectiveness, so many families like us still face the risk of not being able to have children," said Mr. Tu.
In addition, Mr. Tu believes that many families only want to have one child to ensure that they have the best life, not being neglected, favored or compared to their brothers and sisters.
On the contrary, Thanh Thanh (30 years old, office worker) has long determined that she does not want to have children regardless of whether she is married or not.
She expressed her opinion: "At the present time, I want to focus on developing my career. The child could make me and my husband waste a lot of time and miss the best development opportunity."
In addition, she was worried that her child would not have a happy, fulfilling life if her family's marriage broke up. Therefore, the couple chose to focus on a double life, adopting more pets instead of having children.
Before Vietnam, many other countries in the world in general and in Asia in particular such as Japan, South Korea... are facing a state of population aging, seriously affecting socio-economic activities.
In addition to solutions to promote the birth rate, some countries have proactively adapted to the problem of population aging such as increasing working age, promoting the contribution of the elderly... However, this is still a difficult problem for each country to achieve the goal of sustainable socio-economic development.
