HCM City's birth rate is decreasing
At the conference about low fertility rates in HCM City and solutions held by the Department of Health, Pham Thi My Le, deputy head of the Department of Population and Family Planning said in 2000, the replacement level fertility rate was 1.76 child per woman but this rate had dropped to 1.33 in 2018 and would continue to drop.
HCM City is among 17 provinces and cities with the lowest birth rate in Vietnam. If there are no suitable solutions, the population ageing rate will speed up. Insufficient alternative labour sources would adversely affect socio-economic development.
According to Le, women are having fewer children. In the past, women often got married young but nowadays, they play a more central role in the economy. Many prefer to remain single, or to get married later and therefore, have fewer children.
Many families only want to have one child. It is also getting harder for the parents to find jobs, house and to pay for utilities due to rapid urbanisation and economic changes.
Le Truong Giang, chairman of the Public Health Association, said the authorities should scrap the fertility planning programme which discourages families from having a third child.
Pham Thi My Le also suggested that the city authorities should have more policies to encourage women to have more children such as helping to cover hospital charges when giving birth to a second child, giving free education programmes for children under 10 years old or providing preferential housing loans.
