Population ageing: opportunities and challenges of population ageing for sustainable evelopment in Vietnam

Abstract

Population ageing is a global issue, which is observed everywhere and affecting all nations and countries worldwide. In Vietnam, ageing has become a typical sign in the 21st century with a rapid increasing number and proportion of elderly people in the overall population, and is one kind of inevitable trend with both opportunities and challenges. The key is how to seize the opportunities, meet the challenges,respond to ageing of population, and promote sustainable development. In other words, major task of countries is not to obstruct or put off this historical progress, but to face up to the reality of ageing of population, to actively explore strategies and countermeasures of ageing of population that adapt to requirements of sustainable development, to maximize the benefits of ageing of population and to minimize the influences. The main aims of this paper is to describe the characteristics of population ageing in Vietnam, to provide a review of opportunities and challenges of population ageing that pose to sustainable development, and then to bring forward countermeasures from four important aspects: population policy, retirement pension system, developing human resources of the old, and accelerating society economy development in order to respond to ageing of population as well as to realize sustainable development in Vietnam.