Population Policy and Fertility Change in Vietnam in the Period from now to 2030

Abstract

It is known that Vietnam has started an aging period that accompanied with the challenge of labor shortage for economic development. The way of fertility change in the modern society is that the more the socio-economic development the lower the level of fertility. The practice of fertility change in developed countries indicates that it has been very difficult to enhance the level of fertility once it was rather lower than the replacement one. The potential of  increasing for an economy would depend much on the percentage of increasing labor force. Under the market economy, the labor force is floating from areas to areas by the way of demand-supply. People are moving from regions with excess of labors to regions with shortage of labor. For the whole country, the labor force would move from 33 provinces/cities of the higher fertility to those 21 provinces/cities of the lower fertility, therefore keeping the fertility at replacement level for the whole country. It is not rational to set up a target of decreasing fertility by 10% for 33 provinces/cities of the higher fertility because it would not keep the general fertility at replacement level in the period from now up to 2030.