Fertility and Family Planning in Vietnam: Evidence from the 1994 Inter-Censal Demographic Survey
Author(s)
Knodel, John; Van Cam, Mai; Van Phai, Nguyen; Xuyen, Hoang
Abstract
North Vietnam was among the earliest countries in the developing world to adopt an official policy to reduce rapid population growth. As early as 1963, spurred by the results of the 1960 census, the government of North Vietnam issued a statement recommending that couples limit their family size and space their births to reduce the excessive rate of population growth. The policy appears to have been motivated by long-standing concerns about pressures on the land and associated chronic food shortages in the North as well as by the related desire to improve women’s welfare, part of a strategy to enhance productivity to meet the needs of the struggle for independence and reunification. Undoubtedly, before the victory in 1975, heavy demands of the war hampered the North Vietnamese government’s ability to mount an extensive family planning program beyond the provision of IUDs and abortion services at some health facilities. In South Vietnam prior to unification, the government did not promote family planning until the United States Agency for International Development encouraged it to do so in 1971. Nevertheless, the program in the South remained incomplete through the end of the war.
