Vietnam has scrapped the 37-year-old rules limiting families to two children as the country faces up to its ageing population and economic worries.
The southeast Asian nation was "one of the last holdouts among countries with population-control policies", said the The Washington Post, but now it's joining the global trend of moves aimed at boosting birth rates.
In 1988, after years of war had left the nation with "limited resources", Vietnam decreed that families were not to have more than two children, said The Associated Press. Until then, the average number of births per woman in Vietnam was just under four.
Yet the effect on the country's population has only gradually emerged. Despite falling birth rates, working-age people in Vietnam still outnumber those who depend on them – but this is only expected to last until 2039. By 2054, the population is forecast to start shrinking and, with fewer workers, that "could make it harder to grow the economy", added AP, while the cost of meeting the needs of the elderly will only increase.
But "rising living costs" and "changing societal values" mean that the lifting of limits may not "bring the baby boom the government hopes for", said Agence France Presse.
Nguyen Thi Nguyet Nga, a 31-year-old pharmacy worker, told the wire service that she had no plans to have more children because she barely has the money to offer her two daughters a good education. "My parents-in-law really want us to have a boy," but it's "better to have two grow up well" than have three or four who "don't have a good education or good life." | 
