More than 60% of Vietnamese elderly do not have a pension 5
On the morning of April 15, Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities in collaboration with Justus Liebig Giessen University (Germany) published the Vietnam national report `an aging society`.
According to Associate Professor Nguyen Tuan Anh, Deputy Head of the Department of Sociology, Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities, the most worrying problem with population aging in Vietnam is that most elderly people are currently working.
`Nearly 46% of people aged 60 to 64 years old, nearly 30% of people aged 70 to 79 years old and 10% of people over 80 years old still have to work to make a living,` he said.
If based on the national poverty line (income less than 1 million VND per person per month in rural areas and less than 1.3 million VND in urban areas), Vietnam currently has 16% of people over 60 years old classified as poor.
In 2019, out of 13.4 million elderly people, only 23.5% received pensions and monthly social insurance benefits from the State budget and social insurance fund.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Me (77 years old) works as a trash picker on Hanoi streets, February 2018.
Prof. Dr. Pham Quang Minh, Head of the Department of International Development Studies, mentioned that Vietnam is in a golden population period, but the population has begun to age since 2019 with 10.4 million people, more than 65 million people.
`Vietnam is the country with the fastest population aging rate in the world. The time period to increase the proportion of elderly people from 7% to 14% is forecast to be only in two decades (2015-2035)`, Dr. Minh
`Vietnam is facing a situation where the golden population period has not yet passed, an aging population has arrived. However, unlike many countries, our population ages before we get rich. This is a huge challenge.`
Another challenge for policymakers in Vietnam is that many elderly people are suffering from non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure… Therefore, the report recommends that Vietnam needs to develop policies to adapt
Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Duc Vinh, Director of the Institute of Sociology, predicted that by 2035, every two people of working age in Vietnam will have to `bear the burden` of no more than one person outside of working age.
In the past 10 years, Vietnam’s population increased by 11 million, while the number of elderly people increased by nearly 4 million.
From 2026, the proportion of people over 65 years old will account for more than 10% and Vietnam will end the golden population structure that has existed since 2007, entering a period of aging population.
