Ho Chi Minh City is facing multiple challenges, including a persistently low birth rate, a rapidly aging population, and growing pressure to improve the quality of its workforce.
On World Population Day, July 11, a reporter of SGGP Newspaper spoke with Dr. Huynh Minh Chin, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health, about the city's solutions for sustainable population development.
Following the expansion of its administrative boundaries, Ho Chi Minh City's population has reached nearly 15 million, the largest in Vietnam. While the larger population creates greater development opportunities, it also presents significant management challenges. The most notable issue is the prolonged low birth rate, coupled with an increasingly rapid pace of population aging and continued migration-driven population growth.
This requires population policy to move beyond stabilizing population size toward improving population quality, maintaining a balanced population structure, and adapting to an aging society.
The expanded administrative area has given Ho Chi Minh City a more diverse population structure, creating favorable conditions for balancing human resources and expanding development space. However, population management now covers a broader area with significant differences in birth rates, aging trends, socioeconomic conditions, and access to healthcare services. As a result, the city plans to develop region-specific population policies, using population data and electronic health records as the foundation for more effective management.
In 2025, Ho Chi Minh City's total fertility rate is estimated at only 1.53 children per woman, well below the replacement level of 2.1 children. If the low birth rate persists, the city will face shortages of young workers, faster population aging, heavier social welfare burdens, and long-term impacts on economic competitiveness.
The city is implementing a wide range of measures, including public awareness campaigns, premarital counseling, reproductive healthcare services, infertility treatment support, and proposals for policies encouraging couples to have two children. However, officials say young people will only feel confident about starting families if more ambitious measures are introduced, including financial support for childbirth, lower education and childcare costs, expanded social housing for young families, longer maternity leave, and more family-friendly workplaces.
People aged 60 and older currently account for about 13 percent to 14 percent of Ho Chi Minh City's population, and that share is expected to continue rising. Population aging is viewed as an inevitable trend as life expectancy increases. The key challenge, officials say, is not how quickly the population ages but how well the city prepares so older adults can remain healthy, live independently, and continue contributing to society.
Ho Chi Minh City is implementing a comprehensive strategy that includes expanding healthcare networks for older adults at the primary care level, managing chronic diseases, providing regular health checkups, using electronic health records to monitor health throughout people's lives, developing long-term and home-based care models, and strengthening coordination between healthcare and social welfare services. The goal is not only to help people live longer but also to ensure they remain healthy, independent, and enjoy a good quality of life.
The city's current approach is to shift its focus from family planning to comprehensive population quality development. Priority programs include prenatal and newborn screening, premarital health examinations, improving physical stature, child nutrition, prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, adolescent reproductive healthcare, and the development of a highly skilled workforce.
City officials say a city seeking to become a center for economic development, finance, and innovation must first have a healthy, highly skilled workforce and a sustainable population structure. Population policy, they say, is no longer simply about managing population size but has become a long-term investment strategy for the future.
Electronic health records and regular health screening programs will enable lifelong health management for every resident, allowing early detection of health risks and diseases and timely intervention. The city aims to gradually ensure that 100 percent of residents have electronic health records while expanding regular health checkups to shift the healthcare system from treatment toward disease prevention.
During the 2026-2030 period, Ho Chi Minh City will focus on five key priorities: maintaining an appropriate birth rate, adapting to population aging, improving population quality, developing digital population data, and refining population policies to align with the city's urban governance model and expanded administrative area.
