VietNamNet Bridge – Nguyen Thien Truong, chairman of the Viet Nam Family Planning Association, spoke to Gia dinh & Xa hoi (Family & Society) about efforts to control population growth.

What is the replacement birth-rate?

The phrase replacement birth-rate means that each woman has one daughter, who replaces her in the population. That rate means the population is stable.

Vietnam's population will stabilise at about 115-120mil people by the middle of the 21st century. With a stable population, it will be easier to implement socio-economic programmes.

If we cannot reach and maintain that target, policy makers will constantly be playing catch-up, especially when it comes to building things like schools, roads, houses and hospitals.

Why has there been a recent focus on reducing the birth-rate?

Family planning is an important part of reproductive healthcare, especially for women. The lowering of the birth-rate will help improve living standards.

Since a conference in Cairo, Egypt in 1994, the international community has changed its focus from family planning to reproductive health.

Vietnam has unveiled a programme that implements reproductive healthcare and family planning under the Cairo model.

After reaching a replacement birth-rate, what other challenges will Vietnam face?

In the future, the country's population will face more difficulties than in the past, including how to improve living conditions. This is one target of Vietnam's population strategy. After reaching a replacement birth-rate, we have to focus on the standard of living.

Where does Vietnam's standard of living rank on a global scale?

There is no concrete valuation of this. But we can look at the Human Development Index (HDI) in which Vietnam ranks 107th out of 184 countries.

This means that we are below average. If you examine individual HDI criteria, we perform well in education and life expectancy.

But presently, the country's average income of US$650 per person per year places Vietnam on the list of impoverished nations. We will come off the list if we reach an annual per capita income of $1,000.

How long will it take Vietnam to reach that level?

In my opinion, at the current development level and with a stable replacement birth-rate, we will reach an average income of $1,000 per head, per year in the next 10 years.

Economists have posited that if the population increased by 1%, GDP would have to rise by four to 5% to maintain the same standard of living.

In order to develop, we will have to raise GDP by six to 7% for each 1% increase of population. Recently, the country's GDP has been increasing at 8% annually, while population has gone up by 1.3-1.4%.

This means that we have developed, but slowly. At current birth-rates, GDP needs to be over 9% to significantly improve living standards.

It has been said for each dong the State spends on population control efforts in fields like healthcare and education, the return is valued at 10 dong. What do you think about that?

It is right. The number is probably even higher than 10 dong. When parents have children, expenses for feeding, housing and education are high.

It takes time for children to become contributing members of society. Therefore, if we work on population, we will reduce the social burden.

(Source: Viet Nam News)