The forecast of the General Statistics Office (GSO) for 2019-2069 and the measurement of the United Nations show that in 13 years, or by 2036, Vietnam will end its aging period and begin its old population period, which means there will be one person aged 65 or above for every seven persons.

Vietnam is among the countries with the fastest aging rate in the world, and in middle-income conditions, the risk of getting old before becoming rich is a challenge. Although people's average life expectancy is higher than the world and the region, 

These figures are the results extracted from a research work published in late 2022 conducted by the Medical - Sociological Research Institute with the technical support of the Institute of Labor and Social Sciences and another organization. 

The research was conducted on 2,000 people aged 30-44 in the country, in both rural and urban areas, both men and women.

People aged 30-44 have stable jobs and high incomes. They only have 16-30 years to prepare for a ‘successful age’.

Yen and her husband, 35, in Hanoi, have two children going to kindergarten and they live with her husband’s parents in laws. Their total monthly income is VND30 million, but the parents don’t have pensions so they have to ‘live on bread and cheese’.

Yen said both parents suffer from chronic diseases, but help look after her children every day before Yen and her husband return home from work. 

Her parents, who live in the countryside, still have to work to earn their living.

“We still don’t think about how we will live in 15 or 20 years. We just know that we have to work hard to earn money to feed the family,” Yen said, adding that after several months, they can save some millions of dong to spend on the children’s study, or in case the parents fall sick. They forget that they will also need to spend money when they turn old.

The vicious circle

The people who are facing pressure of having to both take care of older parents and raise children are called the sandwich generation by sociologists.

Prof Giang Thanh Long, a senior expert on population and development at the National Economics University, said there are no official statistics about the number of "sandwich people", but this is a common and inevitable situation, especially when the age of the first marriage of Vietnamese is gradually increasing, while the traditional family model has changed to the nuclear family model, and the number of old people is higher than young people.

The population change survey published in late 2022 showed that the overall dependency ratio (under 15 years old and over 65 years old) in Vietnam accounted for about 47.9 percent, higher than the results of the 2019 census and housing (about 45 percent), equivalent to the decrease in the number of people of working age (15-64). The aging index (measured by the number of elderly people per 100 children under 15 years old) is increasing, at 53.1 percent, which means that for every 100 children under 15 years old, there were 53.1 elderly people).

Also according to the population forecast, in 2019, Vietnam did not have any province which had the number of elderly people higher than the number of children, however, this would be seen in 14 provinces in 2029 and 41 provinces in 2039.

The average life expectancy in Vietnam is increasing, now at 73.7, higher than the world’s average level. However, the number of years of healthy life of the elderly in Vietnam is low.

Meanwhile, young people tend to have fewer children, therefore, the burden on them in the future would be heavier, especially when many elderly people have to rely on children because they don’t have income.

Vo Thu