The Ministry of Health is seeking public opinions on the draft Population Law, which empowers individuals and couples to decide when to give birth, the number of children and the spacing between births.
The draft Population Law outlines expanded responsibilities for various agencies and organizations, aiming to comprehensively support family planning and reproductive health. Specifically, these entities will be tasked with equipping men and women prior to marriage with essential knowledge concerning reproductive health, which is directly relevant to their marital life.
This includes guidance on effective childcare and upbringing, alongside efforts to reinforce the societal value of each family having two well-nurtured children. Furthermore, a crucial aspect of their role will be to provide comprehensive advice and guidance on measures to prevent infertility.
A particularly significant transformation introduced by this draft law is the empowerment of individuals and couples to autonomously determine their birth timing, the desired number of children, and the spacing between births. This provision marks a profound departure and represents a substantial policy shift when compared to the previously more restrictive stipulations found in the 2003 Population Ordinance (which was amended in 2008). The new approach seeks to grant greater personal autonomy in reproductive decisions.
According to the Ministry of Health, the new regulation will create a unified and synchronous legal corridor, institutionalizing the Party's policies and guidelines on population work, while contributing to effectively solving population issues arising in the new context, such as low birth rate, population aging, and gender imbalance at birth.
Significantly, the draft Population Law includes a policy that has drawn attention of many employees. The policy allows female workers who have a second child to take 7 months of maternity leave, an increase from the 6 months stipulated in the 2019 Labor Code.
Furthermore, the draft Population Law aims to enhance the social housing support policy for women who have two children in industrial parks, export processing zones, and regions with low birth rates. This demographic will be incorporated into the policy outlined in Article 76 of the Housing Law 2023.
As reported by the Ministry of Health, the national fertility rate is declining below the replacement level, decreasing from 2.11 children per woman in 2021 to 2.01 children per woman in 2022, 1.96 children per woman in 2023, and 1.91 children per woman in 2024, with projections indicating a continued decline in the coming years.
If the fertility rate keeps declining, Vietnam will conclude its golden population phase by 2039. The working-age population will reach its maximum in 2042, and after 2054, the population will start to experience negative growth.
