VIETNAM ONE-OR-2-CHILD POLICY IN ACTION

After many years of encouraging family planning, Vietnam formally instituted a comprehensive policy in 1988 that called upon most parents to limit themselves to one or two children. This article explores the background of the Vietnamese policy, the extent of its implementation, and response at the local level. The one-or-two-child policy is being implemented with far more vigor in certain parts of the North than in the South, owing to different regional population pressures and political cultures. Policy enforcement includes strong social pressures, the imposition of modest fines and, for government cadres, loss of jobs, although such measures are not universally enforced and policy violations persist despite them. As occurred in China during the 1980s, Vietnam's recent free-market reforms have contributed to greater peasant independence from state control and a weakened authority of local cadres, both of which have rendered enforcement of the national fertility policy more difficult.