Speaking at the event, head of the Vietnam Academy of SocialSciences’ Institute for Family and Gender Studies Tran Thi Minh Thi said Vietnamis in the face of challenges caused by rapid population aging, including moreexpenses on health care, retirement, allowance and social welfare.
As of the late 2017, the country was home to 11 millionsenior citizens, accounting for nearly 12 percent of the population, about 2million of them aged above 80. Vietnam is forecast to enter the aging stage by2035 with nearly 21 million old persons. They are expected to make up 20percent of the population by 2038 and around 25 percent by 2049.
Moreover, 70 percent of the elderly still go to work to earna living while they are easily vulnerable to socio-economic risks when theirchildren are jobless. Most of them also suffer non-communicable and chronicdiseases, leading to high health care cost and overload in hospitals.
Participants discussed policies to encourage firms to hire elderlyworkers, ensure jobs for middle-age workers in manufacturing and processingsector, improve the quality of worker demand forecast, and offer vocationaltraining to them.
Many opinions suggested measures to develop social welfaretoward covering the entire population, prevent and mitigate risks forvulnerable groups, sustainably reduce poverty and narrow development gap among zonesand regions, develop youth and gender equality for women’s advancement, andgradually narrow gender gap in the fields of politics, economy, socio-cultureand family affairs./.