Vietnam Scraps Population Control as Record-Low Birth Rates Continue

Paul Erlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb warned of mass starvation and environmental collapse. The cause of the coming apocalypse, he said, was too many babies. The only way to stave off disaster was to reduce the human population. Countries around the world took those warnings to heart, especially communist countries. Most famously, China adopted laws that attempted to control fertility, but so did a few other nations, including Vietnam. Today, facing aging populations and record-low birth r