Alarming news that people are afraid to have children due to life pressures

Birth rate reduction is a big problem

"Vietnam is showing a trend of decreasing replacement fertility, although not at an alarming level, this will certainly become a big problem if we do not have an intervention solution from now," warned Mr. Le Thanh Dung, Director of the Department of Population.

Birth reduction in the context of Vietnam's rapidly aging population, without synchronous solutions to effectively promote the advantages of the golden population structure period and adapt to population aging, is a notable issue in population work.

According to the representative of the Ministry of Health, the population work is currently facing many challenges, including the fact that the replacement fertility rate is not really sustainable. The average number of children of a woman of childbearing age is currently only 1.96 children and the population growth rate is 0.84% ​​in 2023.

According to Mr. Le Thanh Dung, the replacement fertility rate is the average fertility rate of a woman in her entire life, giving birth to enough children to replace her in performing the reproductive function and maintaining the race. The replacement fertility rate is when the total fertility rate reaches 2.1 children/woman.

When the birth rate decreases, it leads to a decline in population size, age structure of the population in the future, a decline in the working-age population; strongly impacts the migration process, accelerates the aging process of the population, and loses the opportunity to take advantage of the golden population structure...

In Vietnam, there is currently a significant difference in the birth rate between regions. There are 21 provinces and cities with low birth rates; even very low, concentrated in the Southeast, Mekong Delta and Central Coast regions. The low birth rate areas account for about 39.4% of the country's population, which will have a huge impact on the country's sustainable development.

Low birth rates not only occur in some urban areas with developed economic conditions but also appear in many provinces with difficult socio-economic conditions.

In particular, the Southeast region is an area with a sharp decline in birth rates. Currently, this region has a birth rate of only 1.56 children per woman. Meanwhile, the Mekong Delta region also plays an important role in agricultural production, ensuring national food security.

According to experts, the reason why people are “afraid” to have children is due to the increasing pressure of life, work, economy, and self-affirmation. Along with that is the pressure of raising children, worries about risks for married people… making young people increasingly afraid to have children, afraid to get married. This is an alarming problem.

Looking at the lessons of aging population in countries such as Korea, Japan, etc., Vietnam needs timely solutions to "revive" the birth rate and slow down the aging process of the population.

Need timely incentive policies

Regarding the issue of solving the birth rate decline, experts say that to encourage young people to get married and have children early, there must be synchronous solutions to reduce pressure on them. Especially the pressure related to the essential needs of life such as: Improving the quality of life, social security policies, ensuring workers have housing, support policies for children, guaranteed income... So that young people can have peace of mind to have children and raise them.

Currently, the Ministry of Health is developing and completing the Population Law Project; in which, many policies are proposed to be changed to suit the current population situation and context.

According to the Department of Population, the draft Population Law currently under development has proposed measures to encourage having two children in provinces and cities with low birth rates. These include very practical policies such as: Proposing one-time cash support when women give birth to a second child; exempting or reducing tuition fees, supporting learning costs for preschool and primary school children...

Along with that, it is necessary to build a suitable environment and community to create conditions for couples to have two children, take good care of and raise their children, share responsibilities among family members; regulate the social responsibility of employers towards employees raising young children...

Some opinions also say that, in order for each family to have 2 children, ensuring income for workers to be able to raise 4 people (2 adults, 2 children) is something that the Government, businesses and workers need to have a unified understanding and solution. When there are 2 working people in a family with enough income for 2 children to be raised and educated properly, people will have less pressure when deciding to have children.

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Cu, former Director of the Institute of Population and Social Issues, also said: “To find solutions to restore the birth rate to the replacement level, there needs to be more flexibility in policies and propaganda for the people. It is necessary to immediately remove policies that are no longer suitable and were applied during the previous period of needing to reduce birth rates, such as many places penalizing people who have a third child... In the current context, there must be policies suitable for each region. Specifically, regions with high birth rates need their own birth reduction policies; regions with low birth rates need policies to loosen birth rates and encourage increased birth rates.”

Accordingly, the development of the Population Law is also an "opportunity" for researchers and policy makers to consider appropriate population and development policies.

Ensuring the maintenance of replacement fertility and reasonable fertility rates between regions will help us have a suitable population size; maintaining a stable proportion of the working-age population will prolong the period of "golden population" structure; slowing down the transition to the "aging population" period, and improving the quality of the population.

In the draft Population Law under development, the Ministry of Health has also proposed to regulate the right of couples and individuals to decide on having children, the time of giving birth, the number of children and the spacing between births, in order to firmly maintain the replacement fertility level nationwide.

“If regulations are put in place so that people can take the initiative in deciding when to give birth, the number of children, etc., the situation of declining replacement fertility can be partly overcome,” said Mr. Le Thanh Dung.