A billboard campaigning for each family to have two children hangs above a street in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Jan. 14, 2024. Jae C. Hong/AP hide caption
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Jae C. Hong/AP
HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnam has scrapped a policy that limited couples to have up to two children, as it addresses a declining birth rate and a shrinking working-age population.
Vietnamese lawmakers on Tuesday passed new amendments to the Population Law, leaving it up to families to decide how many children they are going to have.
The two-child policy, in place since 2009 to prevent overpopulation, restricted families to one or two children. While enforcement was relaxed for ordinary citizens, the policy was strictly applied to government officials and members of the ruling Communist Party.
The country’s population is estimated by the Ministry of Health to be just over 100 million, with a median age of 33.4 years and nearly 70% within the working-age range of 15 to 64. Yet the ministry warned that the national fertility rate dropped to 1.91 per woman in 2024 — the lowest in Vietnam’s modern history and below the replacement level.
If this trend continues, the so-called “golden population” period, when the working-age population significantly outnumbers dependents, will end in less than 15 years, the ministry said.
Concerns about the costs of child-rearing
“I don’t know what to think of this new law,” says Tran Phuong Mai, a 42-year-old housewife in Hanoi. “It may be a good thing, but in our case, it’s a little too late.”
Mai’s husband Nguyen Manh Hung, also 42, was a local government official and a mid-level Communist Party member. He resigned over a decade ago, when Mai became pregnant with their third child. “It was a tough decision, but we didn’t want him to face trouble,” she explains.
“Now we could have five or six children, should we want, but I feel that I am already past the optimal child-bearing age, plus it is so expensive to raise a child,” Mai says.
Sociologists echo concerns about costs, estimating that raising a child from birth to age 22 costs 10 to 20 million Vietnamese dong ($380 to $760) per month — more than the average monthly income.
Health Minister Dao Hong Lan told parliament on Tuesday that several countries similar to Vietnam have abandoned birth control policies, noting that removing child limits “aligns with international practice.” For example, neighboring China ended its one-child policy in 2016 and, since 2021, has allowed couples to have up to three children.
Like many countries, Vietnam is also facing challenges with an aging population
“Vietnam is facing a fundamental challenge that no country in East Asia has yet succeeded in significantly addressing: population aging,” says Jonathan London, a senior economic advisor to Vietnam at the United Nations Development Program.
“This measure needs to be accompanied by other supports for children and families, and especially women,” London says of the lifting of the two-child limit. “Such policies can have a significant impact, but it will require a high level of determination, consistency and scale to truly have breakthrough impacts.”
Lawmakers are also addressing sex imbalances caused by prenatal gender selection, as boys are traditionally preferred in Vietnam’s patriarchal society. The Ministry of Health has proposed increasing fines on prospective parents for pre-birth sex selection from 30 million Vietnamese dong ($1,150) to a maximum of 100 million ($3,800).
