Parents and children at an event recognising outstanding young families held in Hà Nội in October 2025 (VNA/VNS Photo Minh Duc)
Experts recommend that population policy should be adjusted flexibly depending on region, locality, and target groups, combining various policy instruments to encourage childbirth while improving population quality and aiming for sustainable national development.
Vietnam's population policy should shift its focus from control to human resource development, aiming to improve population quality and ensure gender balance, experts said at a conference on the 2024-25 national survey on population and human resources on Friday.
The survey, jointly conducted by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS) and local authorities since August 2024, collected electronic questionnaire data from 256,692 citizens aged 18-60 across every city and province in the country.
The results not only reflect the current status of population and human resources but also help identify regional characteristics to propose locally adaptive and sustainable policies for population and workforce development.
The national survey also provides reliable data and scientific evidence to help ministries, sectors and localities formulate appropriate policies, thereby enhancing workforce quality and promoting sustainable national development.
Addressing the meeting, VASS President Professor Dr Le Van Loi said that the population constitutes the nation’s human resources and that the quality of the population reflects the quality of those resources.
In the new era of development, Vietnam urgently needs to build a high-quality workforce capable of meeting the country’s development demands, he added.
Lợi stressed that population policy should shift from rigid control toward a “flexible regulatory mechanism” using socio-economic instruments such as taxation, finance and housing incentives as well as social services and welfare. This would ensure citizens’ autonomy while maintaining replacement-level fertility.
Associate Professor Dr Vu Tuan Hung, head of the research team, noted that Vietnam’s population policies in recent years have primarily focused on controlling population growth and adjusting demographic structures-an approach that is no longer suited to the current context.
The survey found that 31.4 per cent of respondents do not intend to have children and 27.1 per cent do not wish to marry, while the average desired number of children (2.35) is higher than the current number (1.86). This indicates that without timely solutions, Vietnam's fertility rate will likely remain low.
Hưng proposed that policies should be adjusted flexibly depending on region, locality and target groups, combining various policy instruments – financial, fiscal, housing, education and employment-to encourage childbirth while improving population quality and meeting the requirements of sustainable national development.
Delegates at the conference agreed that conducting a nationwide survey on population and human resources holds great significance as Vietnam enters a new stage of development that demands a high-quality workforce to advance its industrialisation and modernisation progress.
The survey was recognised for its large scale, scientific methodology and comprehensive reflection of population structure, fertility trends and workforce quality across localities.
The results are said to not only provide valuable empirical data but also help identify key challenges in Vietnam’s human development strategy-particularly low fertility rates, gender imbalance and regional disparities in workforce quality.
