Though Vietnam is rapidly changing by virtually every metric, it's the country's ongoing demographic shift that could prove most pivotal. With birthrates dropping and life expectancy rising, Vietnam is among the world's most rapidly ageing societies.
Vietnam is among the world’s most rapidly changing countries, by virtually every metric.
Until 1995, Vietnam’s tallest building was the 15-storey Osic Building – the blue-glassed 70s-build towering over Ho Chi Minh City’s low-lying landscape for two decades at all of 200ft. Today, 25 years later, the Vincom Landmark 81 – a 1,513ft sky-needle completed in 2018 – dominates the city skyline and Vietnam’s tallest structures list, with the stubby Osic not even registering in the top 50.
«In recent decades, Vietnam has made very good socio-economic progress,» she told the Globe, highlighting the inverse relationship between prosperity and birth rates.
«Fertility began to decline in Vietnam from the mid-1960s. The total fertility rate, the number of children a woman has in her lifetime, was between six and seven until the early 1960s. It declined to 4.8 in 1979 and then continued to decline, reaching replacement level fertility of 2.1 since 2006».
With this rapid ageing inevitably comes pressing and immediate challenges.
A phenomenon that more commonly evolves over decades in developed nations, ageing is generally accompanied by well-established social safety nets and healthcare for the elderly.
Currently, while Vietnam’s income per capita has increased substantially since 2014, with all the associated rises in consumer goods prices that entails, its social welfare for the elderly has remained static at around $11.70 per month.
«The number of older persons entitled to social assistance and social work services is very small compared to actual need in society,» she said. «Around 1% is being taken care in institutional care centres and daycare centres».
Evidence increasingly points toward the importance of early childhood health and nutrition as predictors of poor health in old age.
This article was written by ALASTAIR MCCREADY
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