Vietnam scraps two-child policy to combat falling birthrate

Vietnam has scrapped its longstanding two-child policy as it aims to reverse its declining birthrate and ease the pressure from an ageing society.

All restrictions were removed this week, and couples will be free to have as many children as they choose, according to Vietnamese media.

Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan said that a future shrinking population “threatens Vietnam’s sustainable economic and social development, as well as its national security and defence in the long term,” the Hanoi Times reported.

Between 1999 and 2022, Vietnam’s birthrate was about 2.1 children per woman, the replacement rate needed to keep the population from shrinking, but the rate has started to fall, the news outlet said.

In 2024, the country’s birthrate reached a record low of 1.91 children per woman.

Regional neighbours like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong all have declining birthrates, but their economies are more advanced than Vietnam’s.

Vietnam’s working-age population is expected to peak around 2040, according to the World Bank, and it aims to avoid the trap of “getting old before it gets rich”.

The country’s communist government introduced the two-child policy in 1988 to ensure it had adequate resources as it transitioned from a planned to a market economy. At the time, Vietnam was also still overcoming the effects of decades of war.

Vietnam’s two-child policy was most strictly enforced with members of Vietnam’s Communist Party, according to the Associated Press, but families everywhere could lose out on government subsidies and assistance if they had a third or fourth child.

As well as a declining birthrate, Vietnam is also facing significant imbalances across different regions and social groups, the Ministry of Health said.

The declining birthrate is most pronounced in urban areas such as Ho Chi Minh and the capital Hanoi, where the cost of living is highest. But there are also significant disparities in gender. Last year, Vietnam’s sex ratio at birth was 111 boys to every 100 girls.

The disparity between male and female births is most pronounced in North Vietnam’s Red River Delta and the Northern Midlands and Mountains, according to the World Bank, and lowest in the Central Highlands and Mekong River Delta.

Vietnam prohibits doctors from telling parents the sex of their children to curb sex-selective abortions, but the practice continues, with doctors communicating via coded words, according to Vietnamese media.

Left unchecked, the General Statistics Office warned there could be a “surplus of 1.5 million men aged 15-49 by 2039, rising to 2.5 million by 2059”.

In a bid to reverse this trend, the Health Ministry separately proposed tripling the fine for “foetal gender selection” to about $3,800.