With fertility rates falling very low, many localities in the Mekong Delta, such as Tien Giang, Hau Giang, Long An, and Bac Lieu, have introduced various “family-friendly” measures to encourage childbirth, such as cash rewards and certificates of merit for women who have two children before age 35…

Hau Giang Province also provides one-time assistance for prenatal and newborn screening costs at the medical service rates charged by public facilities, as well as a one-time payment of VND 1.5 million toward hospital fees…

In reality, however, fertility rates in these localities have not improved significantly over the years.

Data source: General Statistics Office; figures for 2023 are preliminary. Graphic: Vo Thu

VietNamNet interviewed Prof. Dr. Giang Thanh Long, a senior expert on population and development at National Economics University (NEU) in Hanoi, about proposals and measures to encourage childbirth.

“A Hundred Questions to Answer When Deciding Whether to Have Children”

In your view, are the cash incentives described above a fundamental solution to encouraging childbirth, given that the cost of raising a child is rising rapidly in both rural and urban areas? Or, more simply, would anyone have two children just to collect a reward? Have countries with low fertility rates, such as Singapore, Japan, and South Korea, adopted similar financial assistance policies, and what consequences or results have they seen since introducing them?

– The reality is that young families today face many difficulties in their lives, particularly following the Covid-19 pandemic, with rapid changes in the economy and labor markets both at home and abroad.

Insufficient and precarious employment, together with soaring basic living costs such as housing and food, is causing growing concern about providing for a household with another young child. These problems are particularly acute for migrant workers in urban areas.

When deciding whether to have children, people must think about the “long term”: what care will be needed during pregnancy, where to give birth, how to care for a newborn to ensure good health and nutrition, which preschool and primary school the child will attend, how much it will all cost, and so on. There are a hundred questions to consider when deciding whether to have children.

Countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore have been actively implementing policies to encourage childbirth. In addition to direct cash assistance, their Governments have introduced various regulations on leave and pay for both wives and husbands during pregnancy and after childbirth.

Rewards or assistance at childbirth, as introduced in some countries, have arguably not yet been as effective as their Governments intended—or have not been effective at all—because couples have far more to carefully weigh and calculate than a cash reward. Moreover, when the reward is “too small to be of any use,” couples clearly have children because they want them and have the means, rather than to “chase cash rewards.”

In reality, the substantial impact of living costs, particularly the cost of renting or buying a home suitable for a couple and one or two children, along with plans concerning work and income, leads many couples to postpone having children or to have only one child.

As a result, in South Korea, for example, 2023 marked the fifth consecutive year with a fertility rate below one (meaning that the number of children born was even lower than the number of women of childbearing age). In Japan, fertility has tended to level off, with slight fluctuations between years. The Government is currently making continuous adjustments to policies on education, health care, and other areas, alongside its communication strategy to encourage childbirth.

Are measures such as raising wages and reducing working hours to give young workers opportunities to find a partner really easy to implement, even if they are ideal, when they seem to run counter to practical realities?

– In some recent sociological interviews, many young people said they still had much to prepare for in life, such as securing stable employment and a better income. If their hours at one job were reduced, they might use that time to do another job. Some even said that if they had nothing else to do, they would… sleep more so they could work better. Conversely, others said they were not so busy that they could not find a partner; they simply did not want to yet.

In other words, beyond the need for time, the desire to find a partner depends on many other factors, of which economic factors—employment, income, and so on—are perhaps the most important.

Looking at our economy as a whole, the production sector, with processing and manufacturing contributing substantially to employment and income, employs a large workforce, but productivity has not improved significantly for many years. Reducing working hours requires workers’ productivity to rise proportionately or more; only then can output be maintained or increased.

If we simply consider reducing working hours without compensating through increases in labor productivity, we will inadvertently reduce production capacity. We would then face a “double failure”: workers would work fewer hours but would not use the time to find partners, while output would fall because productivity remained unchanged.

When productivity remains unchanged and working hours decrease, we clearly cannot ask employers to maintain wages or even raise them to offset inflation, as this would impose a heavy burden on businesses. When that burden becomes too great, the easiest option is to cut jobs!

Deciding to Have Children Would Be Easier If…

Could you propose fundamental, long-term, and highly practical solutions to encourage childbirth in our country?

– One point must be made very clearly: whether a couple has children depends on their wishes, based on many factors ranging from personal circumstances, family, and relatives to the socioeconomic conditions where they live…

Cash rewards, which certainly cannot be large enough to help couples address the many needs that arise with another child, will not guarantee an increase in childbirth.

If every couple could access housing, whether by buying social housing or renting at an affordable rate, have stable employment and a safe living environment, and access childcare services and schools, deciding to have children would certainly be easier than relying on a small cash reward while facing so many immediate difficulties.

Personally, I believe the reward serves only as moral encouragement, demonstrating the care of local authorities and the community where the family lives and their willingness to share in its joy.

In fact, everyone wants children, and even several children, to bring joy to the home, to have people with whom to share happiness and difficulties, and especially to care for family members. However, “basic needs must be met before higher aspirations can be pursued.”

This means that, for couples to decide to have children, or even several children, and hope that they will enjoy physical health, mental strength, and financial security, the couples’ economic, social, and health foundations—both physical and mental—are very important. These foundations enable them to create the best possible conditions for stable housing, secure livelihoods, education, health care, and more for themselves and their children.

Childbirth cannot be encouraged directly by urging couples to have children. Instead, it must be encouraged indirectly through sufficiently substantial improvements in living conditions and development opportunities over the long course of a person’s life. Policy coordination is always the most important factor—sometimes it is not quantity, such as the amount of money offered as a “reward,” but quality, such as improvements in education and health care services.