This assessment was announced by Director of the General Office for Population and Family Planning, Dr. Duong Quoc Trong, at a workshop co-organised by the Ministry of Health and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Hanoi on March 27 to discuss international experiences in policy responses to declining fertility.
Speaking at the event, Dr. Trong stressed that Vietnam has made tremendous strides in the average number of offspring a woman of childbearing age will have, which fell by more than three times over the last five decades, from 6.3 in 1961 to 1.99 in 2011.
According to scientific calculations, the number of births decreased by 18 million in the last 20 years, which has contributed significantly to national socio-economic development and improved the population’s health and quality of life, he added.
However, Dr. Trong noted that these positive results will also create new challenges.
Vietnam has entered a “golden” population structure period, and deciding how to make the most of this opportunity to create a breakthrough in socio-economic development is no easy task.
The average life expectancy in Vietnam has also increased significantly, from 40 in 1961 to 73 in 2010, which means the number of elderly people will increase rapidly in the near future and pose the challenge of an aging population.
The large sex at birth ratio imbalance is a hot issue in Vietnam now and it has major social, cultural and economic implications.
Mandeep K. O’Brien, UNFPA Representative in Vietnam, said that the decline in the total fertility rate (TFR) leads to a marked decrease in the number of newborns as well as an increase in the number of elderly people, which results in a shrinking labour force.
She suggested focusing on ensuring universal access to quality sexual and reproductive healthcare, especially in mountainous, remote and ethnic areas, in order to bridge the gap between regions and ethnic groups shown in some of the related development indexes.
As Vietnam is in its “golden” population period with young people accounting for about 40% of the total population, investing in the youth and providing them access to quality social services, including sexual and reproductive healthcare, can benefit sustainable development.
International delegates at the workshop shared their findings and experiences to look for a way to promote more efficient population and family planning work in the future.
The results of the workshop will provide domestic policy makers and regulatory bodies with evidence from research and population policies in other nations that have experienced demographic changes similar to those in Vietnam.
A number of recommendations offered at the event are expected to help Vietnam create comprehensive legal and policy frameworks to solve the challenges of declining fertility in accordance with local conditions, as well as develop a Draft Population Law to be submitted to the National Assembly by 2014.
