HCMC's rising birth rate still 'too low'

However, the new ratio is still "too low," Pham Vu Hoang, deputy head of the Population Department at the Ministry of Health, told a seminar in HCMC on Saturday.

The largest city in Vietnam has had one of the lowest fertility rates in Vietnam for several years now.

The current ratio is far below the replacement level fertility rate of 2-2.1 children per woman that the Vietnamese government aims to reach and maintain nationwide.

Replacement level fertility is the level of fertility at which a population replaces itself equally from one generation to the next. In developed countries, replacement-level fertility can be taken as requiring an average of 2.1 children per woman.

Hoang said low fertility has long-term consequences, such as an aging population with higher national health care costs and other societal burdens.

The city has already witnessed rapid population aging with the average life expectancy of its people now at 76.3 compared to the national level of 73.6.

A Vietnam News Agency report in July said the rate of people aged over 60 in the city has exceeded 10%.

Last year, the southern metropolis and commercial hub was home to 1.033 million people aged over 60, or 11.03% of its total population. These figures have been regarded by experts as marking a milestone in the city's rapid process of population aging.

Pham Chanh Trung, director of HCMC Bureau of Population and Family Planning, said there are two main reasons for the low birth rates in the city.

The trend of marrying late and thus having children later in life is one.

And the increasingly high cost of living and rising child care costs are also keeping married couples from having second children, or even giving birth at all, according to Trung.