The Ministry of Health is drafting the Population Law to create a unified and synchronous legal basis, contributing to institutionalizing the Party's guidelines, policies and guidelines on population work; overcoming limitations and shortcomings; meeting the requirements of population work in the new situation.
According to the Report on the draft Law, the Ministry of Health said that from 2006 to 2021, our country has achieved and maintained an alternative fertility rate; maintained an appropriate population growth rate; the population size in 2024 reached more than 101 million people.
Vietnam is in the golden population period, creating great advantages for socio-economic development; population distribution has become more reasonable; population quality, human development index (HDI) of our country is constantly increasing; the average life expectancy of Vietnamese people is increasingly improved. This result is an important premise for shifting population policies from family planning to population and development.
Through reviewing relevant legal documents, the Ministry of Health found that many regulations related to population work have not ensured consistency and unity with the current legal system and do not meet practical requirements, specifically:
Firstly, some contents of the Population Ordinance are no longer in accordance with the Constitution, such as: limiting regulations on the right to decide on the number of children (Article 10).
Second, some contents of the Population Ordinance are no longer consistent with current legal documents or have been regulated by legal documents, such as: regulations on limiting large-scale population concentration in some large urban areas (Article 18 of the Ordinance).
Third, some provisions of the law on population are no longer suitable for the practical situation and do not meet the requirements of population work in the new situation, such as: the regulation limiting the number of children (each couple has one or two children); there are not strong enough incentives (housing, healthcare, education, tax, working time, childcare and supervision...); the penalty is low and not commensurate.
Vietnam will have a surplus of 1.5 million men aged 15-49 by 2039
The nationwide fertility tends to decrease below the replacement level, from 2.11 children/woman (2021) to 2.01 children/woman (2022), 1.96 children/woman (2023) and 1.91 children/woman (2024) - the lowest in history and is expected to continue to be low in the following years (if the birth level continues to decline, until 2039, the population will reach the age of 2042. The peak and after 2054 the population will begin to grow negative.
Gender imbalance at birth becomes a challenge: In 2006, the sex ratio at birth was 109.8 boys/100 girls born alive - exceeding the natural balance threshold (103-107); in 2015 it was 112.8, in 2024 it was 111.4. Thus, the sex ratio at birth is always high.
It is forecasted that if the sex ratio at birth remains the same as it is now, Vietnam will have a surplus of 1.5 million men aged 15-49 in 2039 and increase to 2.5 million in 2059.
That will lead to the risk of breaking family structure, a part of men will have to marry late, have no ability to marry, increase the trafficking of women, girls, prostitution, gender-based violence, transnational crimes...
There is no synchronous solution to adapt to population aging and aging; elderly health care services are still limited. Population quality has not met requirements.
The Ministry of Health said that from 2016 to now, investment resources for population and development are still low and not commensurate with demand. The 2011-2015 period was about 740 billion/year, the 2016-2020 period was only under 360 billion/year.
From 2021 to present, after the end of the Health - Population Target Program, period 2021-2023, although the average actual demand is up to 800 billion VND/year, the locality has only allocated about 95 billion VND/year and the Central Government has only ensured about 25 billion VND/year (meeting only 15% of demand).
Currently, this draft law is being consulted by the public on the Ministry of Health's Electronic Information Portal and the Government's Electronic Information Portal.
