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At the conference
At a conference held on December 18 in Hanoi to announce the results of research regarding population and and housing census 2019, the GSO said that over the previous 30 years, the nation’s fertility rate has decline by almost half, with the total fertility rate falling from 3.80 children per woman in 1989 to 2.09 children per woman in 2019.
The country has been able to maintain a stable birth rate at a replacement level for more than a decade, whilst the trend of having two children is still common. This indicates that the nation’s successful implementation of the Population and Family Planning scheme has achieved the aim of reducing births.
Studies also show sex imbalances at birth, with the sex ratio at birth in 2019 being 111.5 boys per 100 girls, showing that the imbalance of the sex ratio at birth is still at a very high level.
Most notably, the gender ratio at birth began to increase in 2004, reaching 112 boys per 100 girls, with the ratio levelling off after 2010. Indeed, the lowest birth rate was seen in Ho Chi Minh City and the highest was recorded in the central province of Ha Tinh.
The country’s sex ratio at birth is higher than the natural biological level of 104 to 106 boys per 100 girls, whilst also showing that there was a shortage of 45,900 girls in 2019, accounting for 6.2% of all newly born girls.
This is largely caused by the preferences of couples to have a son and the need to have an additional child. For couples who have two daughters, their possibility of having an additional child is twice as high as that of couples with at least one son.
The birth of an additional child in an effort to have a son is particularly evident in the demographic of people with higher education and better living standards.
Nguyen Thi Huong, general director of the GSO, said, “With the current situation of fertility in population structure as well as the current high sex ratio at birth, the population structure in the future will change towards aging and face shortage of men in some age groups. The current imbalance in the sex ratio at birth will affect the future population structure such as the excess number of young men.”
The population forecast for the 2019 to 2069 period is that the Vietnamese population will reach 104.5 million by 2029, 110.8 million by 2039, and 116.9 million by 2069.
