In its August 12 market newsletter, the Vietnam Association of Realtors (VARS) said the trend of "being afraid to get married, being lazy to have children", not wanting or having very few children has appeared in Vietnam and is at an alarming level in some cities. The main cause stems from financial problems.

Specifically, according to data published by the General Statistics Office (GSO), over the past 30 years, marriage and fertility trends in Vietnam have changed dramatically as the age of marriage has increased sharply and the marriage rate has decreased, causing fertility to drop by half.

The trend of not wanting or having only one child is spreading in urban areas, especially big cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The birth rate has dropped significantly from 3.8 children in 1989 to below 2 children in 2023.

During the period 2013 - 2023, Vietnam's population increased by an average of only about 1 million people per year.

Figures from the General Statistics Office report last July showed that the average age of first marriage in Ho Chi Minh City is 30.4 years old, a record high in Vietnam. The average number of children a woman in the city of childbearing age has is only 1.32.

According to VARS, housing prices are the biggest contributor to this situation. For example, as housing prices continue to rise, rents will also increase, putting pressure on the cost of living.

Besides, many young people think that they must buy a house before getting married or having children, but because the price of real estate is skyrocketing, it is not easy to buy, so they "work day and night", leading to missing the "golden" time to get married and have children.

VARS said that current measures to address the problem of promoting marriage before the age of 30 and encouraging births in our country are still very general and will certainly not have the expected effect.

Therefore, VARS believes that to encourage marriage before the age of 30 and increase the birth rate, the Government needs to drastically implement existing measures and research and develop clearer incentive policies, such as prioritizing one-time support for purchasing social housing for couples who have given birth to two children.

According to VARS, this will be the root solution to the problem of "fear of marriage, laziness to have children" and solve the housing problem.

To solve the housing problem for the majority of people, VARS recommends that in addition to increasing the supply of social housing in urban areas, the state needs to study intervention policies to develop "affordable" commercial housing.