In Vietnam, acceptance of divorce correlated with education level: survey

The recent survey, which polled 1,400 people aged 18 and above in all provinces and cities, found that overall only 21 percent thought divorce was "not wrong" while 40 percent said it was.

The higher their education level, the more likely they were to say divorce is "normal".  

The least approval for divorces was among seniors (50 years and older) and people with low education and income (less than VND5 million or $215 a month).

Almost no one with postgraduate qualification thought divorce was "wrong".

People in the north were less accepting of divorce than those in the central and southern regions. A similar divide was seen between rural and urban people, with the former being less accepting.

The findings of the study coincide with that of a divorce study done in 2017 by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences in Hanoi and the southern provinces of Khanh Hoa and Tien Giang. It too found that acceptance of divorce was correlated to education levels.

Phung Duc Tung, director of the Mekong Development Research Institute, an independent scientific research agency, said Vietnam's divorce rate is on the rise but still lower than the world's average. "Factors like culture, economy and awareness also affect people’s opinion of divorce." 

The findings about divorce were part of a larger study of Vietnamese people's feelings and thoughts by the institute. Remarkably, it found over 90 percent of respondents saying they were "happy". Of this, nearly half said they were "very happy".

The more educated people were, the happier they were, it found.

The result corroborates the 2018 World Values Survey (WVS), which found 93 percent of Vietnamese were "happy".

WVS is a global research project which explores people's values and beliefs, how they change over time and what social and political impact they have.