In 2020, Vietnam had 22.6 million people aged 15 to 24, but this figure fell to 20.7 million at the end of last year, according to the Culture and Education Commission of Vietnam. The national assembly.
This means that the number of young workers has decreased by 170,000 per year.
According to the commission, the reasons for this are the rapid aging of the population and the reduction in the number of births.
It took only 25 years for Vietnam to move from the population aging stage, which means that the group aged 60 and above represents 10% of the population, to the population aging stage, which means that people aged 60 and over represent 20% of the population.
In most developed countries, this transition took much longer to occur, even up to a century in some countries.
Vietnam’s fertility rate has fallen sharply, leading to the risk of labor shortages.
The average number of children a woman of childbearing age had in 2001 was 2.28, but this ratio fell to 2.1 in 2021.
Women in Ho Chi Minh City currently have the lowest fertility rate in the country, with a rate of 1.39 children per woman of childbearing age.
The Culture and Education Commission called the situation “a worrying sign for the future generation of workers,” which becomes a major challenge for Vietnam in improving the quality of human resources under the international economic integration.
Predicting that Vietnam would end its “golden population period” in 2038, the committee proposed relevant agencies to study policies to improve the quality of young workers and adjust the insurance law social security to prevent people of working age from benefiting from single social insurance. withdrawal.
Those who withdraw all their insurance will receive little or no pension when they retire; and cannot benefit from free health insurance.
The population’s golden age is defined by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as when 30% of the population’s children are under the age of 14 and 15% of all people are aged 65 or over.
Coming out of this period means Vietnam will have fewer people of working age and more people of retirement age, which can bring many burdens to society.
Vietnam currently ranks third in Southeast Asia, after Thailand and Singapore, in terms of the proportion of population aged 65 and above, while its per capita income ranks sixth in the region.
With a population of 100 million last April according to the General Statistics Office, Vietnam is now the 15th most populous country in the world and its population density ranks 41st.
When it comes to annual per capita income, Vietnam is ranked 121st with $4,010. This figure is 10 times lower than that of Japan and 19 times lower than that of the United States, placing Vietnam in the lower middle income bracket.
