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Vietnam has introduced a raft of incentives to encourage couples to have more children as the Southeast Asian nation seeks to reverse a fast-declining fertility rate.
Gone is the country’s long-standing two-child policy, scrapped last year. In its place is a new population law, which took effect on July 1, offering a suite of sweeteners designed to nudge Vietnamese couples towards larger families.
These include seven months of maternity leave for second children, subsidised prenatal and newborn screenings, cash bonuses of up to 6 million dong (US$228) and priority housing for young parents who have two children before the age of 35.
Vietnam’s fertility rate sank to a record low of 1.91 births per woman in 2024, ticking up only marginally to 1.93 the following year and still well short of the so-called replacement rate of 2.1 needed to sustain a population.
The Health Ministry has set a target of raising the fertility rate to replacement level by 2030, but achieving that will be a challenge. Already, nearly one in seven Vietnamese is older than 60; by mid-century, government projections suggest that figure could hit one in four.