Vietnam’s declining birthrate is most pronounced in urban areas, while nationally, male births still outnumber female.

Vietnam has scrapped its longstanding two-child policy as it aims to reverse its declining birthrate and ease the pressure from an ageing society.

All restrictions were removed this week, and couples will be free to have as many children as they choose, according to Vietnamese media.

Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan said that a future shrinking population “threatens Vietnam’s sustainable economic and social development, as well as its national security and defence in the long term,” the Hanoi Times reported.

Between 1999 and 2022, Vietnam’s birthrate was about 2.1 children per woman, the replacement rate needed to keep the population from shrinking, but the rate has started to fall, the news outlet said.

In 2024, the country’s birthrate reached a record low of 1.91 children per woman.

Regional neighbours like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong all have declining birthrates, but their economies are more advanced than Vietnam’s.

Vietnam’s working-age population is expected to peak around 2040, according to the World Bank, and it aims to avoid the trap of “getting old before it gets rich”.

The country’s communist government introduced the two-child policy in 1988 to ensure it had adequate resources as it transitioned from a planned to a market economy. At the time, Vietnam was also still overcoming the effects of decades of war.

Vietnam’s two-child policy was most strictly enforced with members of Vietnam’s Communist Party, according to the Associated Press, but families everywhere could lose out on government subsidies and assistance if they had a third or fourth child.

As well as a declining birthrate, Vietnam is also facing significant imbalances across different regions and social groups, the Ministry of Health said.

The declining birthrate is most pronounced in urban areas such as Ho Chi Minh and the capital Hanoi, where the cost of living is highest. But there are also significant disparities in gender. Last year, Vietnam’s sex ratio at birth was 111 boys to every 100 girls.

The disparity between male and female births is most pronounced in North Vietnam’s Red River Delta and the Northern Midlands and Mountains, according to the World Bank, and lowest in the Central Highlands and Mekong River Delta.

Vietnam prohibits doctors from telling parents the sex of their children to curb sex-selective abortions, but the practice continues, with doctors communicating via coded words, according to Vietnamese media.

Left unchecked, the General Statistics Office warned there could be a “surplus of 1.5 million men aged 15-49 by 2039, rising to 2.5 million by 2059”.

In a bid to reverse this trend, the Health Ministry separately proposed tripling the fine for “foetal gender selection” to about $3,800.

Elon Musk hit out at President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending bill again on Wednesday, calling on Americans to tell their representatives in Washington to “kill the bill”.

The budget, which includes huge tax breaks and more defence spending, was passed by the House of Representatives last month and is now being considered by senators.

The tech billionaire posted on X earlier this week that the bill would add to the US budget deficit and saddle Americans with “crushing” debt.

On Tuesday, he described it as a “disgusting abomination”, in a widening rift between the two.

The bill has the backing of President Donald Trump and would be the legislative linchpin of his second-term agenda if it passes Congress.

“Shame on those who voted for it,” said Musk on Tuesday, hinting that he may try to unseat the politicians responsible at next year’s midterm elections.

Musk left the administration abruptly last week after 129 days working to cut costs with his team, known as Doge. The comments mark his first public disagreement with Trump since leaving government, after having previously called the plan “disappointing”.

Soon after Musk’s tweet on Wednesday, the White House sent out a “myth buster” statement, calling any assertion that the bill would lead to higher deficits a “hoax”.

“By every honest metric, President Donald J. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill dramatically improves the fiscal trajectory of the United States and unleashes an era of unprecedented economic growth,” the statement reads.

It made no mention of Musk or his tweets. The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.

The South African-born tech billionaire’s time in the Trump administration came to an end on 31 May, although Trump said that “he will, always, be with us, helping all the way”.

In its current form, the bill – which Trump refers to as the “big beautiful bill” – has been estimated to increase the budget deficit – the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it receives – by about $600bn (£444bn) in the next fiscal year.

In a series of posts on X on Tuesday, Musk said that the “outrageous, pork-filled” spending bill will “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America [sic] citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt”.

In American politics “pork” refers to spending on projects in lawmakers’ constituencies.

Musk has previously vowed to fund campaign challenges against any Republican that votes against Trump’s agenda. But on Tuesday he fired a warning to those who backed the bill.

“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” he wrote.

Asked about Musk’s comments soon after the first post, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “the President already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill”.

“This is one, big, beautiful bill,” she added. “And he’s sticking to it.”

The legislation also pledges to extend soon-to-expire tax cuts passed during the first Trump administration in 2017, as well as an influx of funds for defence spending and to fund the administration’s mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

To the dismay of fiscal conservatives, it would lift the limit on the amount of money the government can borrow, known as the debt ceiling, to $4tn.

The comments from Musk reflect wider tensions among Republicans over the plan, which faced stiff opposition from different wings of the party as it worked its way through the House.

The Senate has now taken it up, and divisions are already emerging in that chamber, which is also narrowly controlled by Republicans.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has said over the last few days he will not support the bill if it raises the debt ceiling.

“The GOP [the Republican Party] will own the debt once they vote for this,” he told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, over the weekend.

Trump responded to Paul with a series of social media posts, accusing him of having “very little understanding of the bill” and saying that the “people of Kentucky can’t stand him”.

“His ideas are actually crazy,” Trump wrote.

Republican lawmakers pushed back on Musk’s comments, with Senate majority leader John Thune saying the party plans to “proceed full speed ahead” despite “a difference of opinion”.

Thune and other senators met Trump for a “positive discussion” on Wednesday, he told reporters at the White House.

He downplayed Musk’s posts, saying it would do little to scupper the work of lawmakers.

“We are moving forward,” he said, also adding that “the wheels are in motion,” and that “failure is not an option”.

Mike Johnson – the Republican Speaker who has ushered the legislation through the House – told reporters on Capitol Hill that “my friend Elon is terribly wrong”.

“It’s a very important first start. Elon is missing it,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he had a 20-minute phone call with the tycoon about the bill on Monday, adding that its phasing out of electric vehicle tax credits could “have an effect” on Tesla, Musk’s firm.

“I lament that,” Johnson said, expressing surprise that Musk criticised the bill despite their call. “I just deeply regret he’s made this mistake.”

Among the issues that upset Musk involved air traffic control at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), according to Axios.

Musk was hoping it would be run on his Starlink satellite system, but he was denied because of issues relating to the technology and the appearance of a conflict of interest, the political outlet reported.

Some Democrats welcomed Musk’s comments despite their previous criticism of him and the work of Doge.

“Even Elon Musk, who’s been part of the whole process, and is one of Trump’s buddies, said the bill is bad,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “We can imagine how bad this bill is.”

Trump and Republicans in Congress have set a deadline of 4 July to get the measure passed and signed into law.

Musk supported Trump in last year’s November election with donations of more than $250m.

To make peace with spending hawks, Trump is also asking Congress to pass a plan that would reduce current spending by $9.4bn, a figure derived from Doge’s work.

It would mainly slash funding for foreign aid, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and for broadcasters NPR and PBS.

US Marine veteran Trevor Reed is on his way home after being released from Russia, where officials said he was wrongfully detained since 2019.

“Today, our prayers have been answered and Trevor is safely on his way back to the United States,” his family said in a statement.

Reed’s release came as part of a prisoner swap with Russia, with the US sending back Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot sentenced in 2011 to a 20-year prison term for importing more than $100 million of cocaine.

The surprise prisoner exchange was the result of long and difficult negotiations between the US and Russia, according to both countries. The fraught diplomacy was made all the more extraordinary because of the utter collapse of relations between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

President Joe Biden, who met with the Reed family last month, said in a statement on Wednesday that the negotiations to release him “required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly.”

“I heard in the voices of Trevor’s parents how much they’ve worried about his health and missed his presence,” Biden said. “And I was delighted to be able to share with them the good news about Trevor’s freedom.”

Reed, 30, was imprisoned for allegedly assaulting a police officer while he was drunk, but his family and US diplomats said he was innocent, describing the evidence against him at trial as “preposterous” and “absurd.” Instead, they said he was being held as a bargaining chip.

In recent weeks, Reed’s health had deteriorated and he had been hospitalized with signs of tuberculosis and a possible broken rib, according to the State Department, making his release all the more urgent.

Reed’s family said Biden’s decision to go ahead with the prisoner swap may have saved the former Marine’s life. They had previously expressed fears that Reed might suffer the same fate as Otto Warmbier, the American student held for 17 months in North Korea who went into a coma after his 2017 release and died.

The State Department has previously declined to identify exactly how many Americans have been detained in Russia, but there are at least two high-profile prisoners who remain behind bars there: Paul Whelan and WNBA star Brittney Griner.

Whelan, another former Marine, has been detained the longest, having been first arrested at the end of 2018, and accused of being an American spy. His family has denied this, but he was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison.

Ryan Fayhee, a former Justice Department official now acting as a pro bono attorney for the Whelan family, said they had “complex feelings” about Wednesday’s news.

“They wish the family the very best, but they also view this as a missed opportunity,” Fayhee said, pointing to the different crimes the two swapped prisoners were convicted of. “It was a pretty high price to pay. If you make a comparison between the two people who’ve gone home today, to not include Paul in that is a missed opportunity.”

Fayhee called on Biden to meet with the Whelans like he did with the Reeds, and consider alternative options than prisoner exchanges in order to free him.