Vietnam seeks to stop aging
After decades with a policy that limited the maximum number of children per family to two, the Vietnamese government now encourages young people to marry early and procreate to slow the rapidly aging population, especially in large cities.
In his resolution 588, signed two weeks ago, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc calls on the authorities of the provinces with a lower birth rate to encourage young people to marry before reaching the age of 30 and for women to give birth to birth to her second child before age 35.
Professor Nguyen Duc Loc, president of the SocialLife University of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh (former Saigon), explains that the Government is thus trying to stop the rapid aging of the population, which in 15 years has passed an average age of 26 , 4 at 32.5 years of today.
"The most important factor for lowering birth rates has been the change in the mentality of young people, but that has always been linked to economic uncertainty. The mentality is the result of economic factors, the new lifestyle and propaganda state, which encouraged to have two children at most, "Loc told Efe.
END OF LIMITATION OF TWO CHILDREN
The government recommendation marks the end of the limitation of two children per family carried out in the last 45 years to avoid a demographic explosion and thus guarantee the economic livelihood of a country emerging from three decades of almost uninterrupted wars.
Although the policy has been implemented more loosely than that of the only child in neighboring China, it has conditioned the family planning of millions of Vietnamese who work in the mammoth public sector, where a third child in the family supposed ostracism at work and the end of any aspiration for promotion or salary improvement.
In its new desire to move from "reducing fertility" to "maintaining replacement fertility" - estimated at 2.1 children per woman - the communist regime demands the abolition of the third child penalties that are still in force in some organizations and agencies governmental.
On the contrary, it urges granting financial aid for education to families with two or more children, better access to social housing, priority for enrollment in schools of their choice, and increasing the "social contribution" to those who do not have children or have children. late.
LOW BIRTH IN THE CITIES
While in some rural areas the fertility rate continues to ensure generational replacement, it is especially in large cities and in depressed regions from which young people migrate where the average number of children per woman has plummeted.
Ho Chi Minh, the most populous city with more than 10 million inhabitants and the great economic center of the country, presents the lowest rate, with just 1.33 children per woman, far from the national average of 2.1, despite be the city with the highest per capita income.
"The urban lifestyle encourages young people to focus on their careers and personal freedom, thus leaving marriage out of their priorities," explains Professor Loc.
Bich Ngoc Su, a 36-year-old woman who decided with her husband to have a single child, adds to this factor the higher cost of living in cities, especially housing, and the competition that arose between families to create perfect children .
"Raising a child is like a career, I am not sure if it is a new culture, but people now try to target their child all the activities they can to make him better than other children and that costs money", indicates.
"With limited time, energy, and money, we decided to have only one child offering them a quality education instead of two and not having time to spend with them or to provide them with the best conditions," says Ngoc, whose parents moved from Hanoi. , 1,500 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City, to care for her son while she and her husband work.
Ngoc understands that the government's recommendation seeks to guarantee a future workforce but sees it impossible that in a city with the competitive climate of Ho Chi Minh most young people marry and have children before reaching thirty.
"I have friends over 30 who don't want to get married, but for those who want to, it's also very difficult. A former co-worker spent five years in the city trying to find a husband. In the end she moved back to her town, on the outskirts of Hanoi, after six months he had already married, "he says.
Other urban women are less sympathetic to the government's recommendation, which they consider an attack on their individual freedom, as Nguyen Thi Mai Lien, 28, puts it: "It seems stupid to me, I marry whenever I want; tell me to do it before 30 is a violation of my rights. " Eric San Juan
Eric San Juan
