INTRODUCTION
As one of the countries with the fastest ageing speed, Vietnam is having less time and resources to prepare and adjust for its ageing population. The country is experiencing (1) strong increasing dependency of older people to public services while government’s capacity is limited; and (2) lack of attention and investment for older people, as potential resource and contribution to society. Instead of struggling by itself to meet up with growing demands of older people through traditional instruments, the government should also foster public policy initiatives that allow more collaboration among key stakeholders. Specifically, the suggested policy intervention is promoting the national-wide replication of a current successful community-based model called “Inter-generational self-help club”. This is the very first model of commissioning and collaboration among local government, non-profit organization and local community to empower older people and improve their livelihood.
VIETNAM: “GROWING OLD BEFORE GROWING RICH”
Vietnam is at risk of “growing old before growing rich” (IMFBlog, 2017). The fact that youth accounts for nearly a half of population tends to make people ignorant to acknowledge that Vietnam is also among countries with the fastest ageing pace (Ageing Asia). In 1990, older people above 60 years old in Vietnam accounted for 7.2% of the total population. By 2011, the country officially reached the “ageing population” point when this rate was more than 10%. By 2050, older people are predicted to account for 30.8% and Vietnam will be in the middle stage of “aged population” (Ageing Asia).
Ageing population is irresistible global trends that happening in both developed and developing countries. However, rapid ageing occurs while Vietnam has much lower income level than countries with similar aging population structure are posing numerous challenges. In the upcoming decades, the country will likely to cope with various economic and fiscal pressures in its public systems for the older society. How well-prepared is Vietnam to face with the challenges? What public policies and interventions are needed? How can the country embrace an ageing population instead of regarding it as a burden? Having less time and resources to prepare and adjust for the rapid ageing population is the wicked problem for Vietnam.
POLICY INTERVENTION
Rationale for policy intervention
Differentiating a condition from a problem is essential in policy design. Rapid ageing can be a condition but it is not necessarily a problem. Rapid ageing in Vietnam is in fact, the country’s significant achievement as the result of better living quality, especially with improvement in healthcare, increase of life expectancy, reductions of infertility and mortality. However, when there is a greater poverty, inequality and dependency; rapid ageing – as the condition will become problems. David L. Weimer and Aidan R. Vining stated that “Greater equity in distributions of economic and political resources should be viewed as only necessary conditions for appropriate government intervention” (Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice, sixth edition, 2017). The current demographic structure cannot change itself in a short period of time. Meanwhile, the demands of more effective public services for older people keep rising each day; so as the budget deficit and imbalanced labour workforces. It is essential for public policy intervention to come into play.
The first challenge is employment and income for older people. Older people in Vietnam are very vulnerable to poverty. Most of them are farmers with unstable and low incomes. World Bank report - Taking stock : an update on Vietnam's recent economic developments - special focus : promoting healthy and productive aging in Vietnam, 2016 showed that about 22% older people live in poverty and many are near the poverty line. (p. 34). Meanwhile, older people are a potential labour force that is still ignored. A large majority of older people said they still participate either directly or indirectly in income generating activities (p. 35). Nevertheless, older people have limited access to financial services, job information and vocational training.
Secondly, growing older population causes pressure for public spending. In 2014, state system is capable of providing pension and social insurance for around 29% of older people; social allowances for 16% older people (Ageing Asia). Labor Force Participation Rate, modelled ILO estimate reveals that Vietnam’s working age population (15-64 years old) sharply shrank from 2014 to 2017 and this trend will continue in the upcoming decades (The World Bank Data, 2017). Declining labor force can slow economic growth while the number of older people depending on government assistance and public services are on rise. With limited budget, Vietnam’s government is struggling between increasing tax and reducing government role in public healthcare, social welfare.
In brief, public policy intervention is necessary when this demographic shift is having significant impacts on every aspect of public life and the society cannot fix itself in short period.
Suggested policy intervention and post-policy analysis
Designing policy requires us to answer fundamental questions such as: What problems the policy aims to address? Who owns the problem? and what policy instruments should be used? etc. The identified problems are (1) Increasing dependency of older people to public services while government’s capacity is limited; and (2) older people as potential resource and contribution to society is neglected. These wicked challenges are not owned by the government alone. To tackle these problems requires active participations from many key stakeholders including as for-profit, non-profit sectors, families, community, government at different levels and also the older people themselves.
Networked governance, stronger collaboration and commissioning approach
Instead of struggling by itself to meet up with growing demands of older people through traditional instruments such as increasing social pensions and healthcare services; the government should also foster public policy initiatives that allow more collaboration among key stakeholders. As a country that recently transformed from centrally-planned economy to open market economy, this approach is rather new in Vietnam and there is little framework to facilitate in practice.
Specifically to the ageing context in Vietnam, the policy intervention the writer would like to suggest is promoting the national-wide replication of a current successful community-based model called “Inter-generational self-help club”. This is the very first model of commissioning and collaboration among local government, non-profit organization and local community to empower older people and improve their livelihood. Inter-generational Self-help Model is currently supported by Vietnam Association of the Elderly (mass organization), Vietnam National Committee on Ageing (branch organization chaired by Deputy Prime Minister), Help Age International in Vietnam (Non-profit organization), and local authorities in north provinces. Each Integrational Self-help Club will receive a certain amount of seed money to set up and operate their club to conduct key activities for older people including: Microcredit, livelihood, healthcare and home-based care, life-long learning, volunteer works and community support by older people, raising older people’s awareness about available laws and public services, and fundraising to sustain club’s activities after the program ends. Inter-generational Self-help Model has been implemented in many poor communes of Northern provinces such as Thanh Hoa, Hai Duong, Hai Phong, Ha Giang, Hai Phong for five years.
Post-Policy analysis
This policy intervention approach will firstly help community and older people to adapt with multi-faced challenges including employment & income, lack of healthcare and low living qualities at many local areas, especially poor, remoted and mountainous regions. Funding from central government will hardly increase any time soon; making it more essential for more participation of key stakeholders to do the best they can with current resources. While waiting additional budget from central government, older people today should be empowered to sustain life on their own. The instruments will help to mitigate dependency rate, allow older people to continue contributing to economic and improve their living qualities in the long run.
Secondly, this collaborative model will help to reduce public spending constraint and at the same time allows key stakeholder to take advantage of their strengths. The supporting argument for this is the idea of networked governance and “steer better than row government” (Osborne, 1993). Instead of trying to do everything with a limited budget and capacity, government of the day should create space for more participation; coordinate and bring key stakeholders together towards coherent public goals based on their strengths, specializations and interests. Stakeholders’ participations can be demonstrated in different ways. For example: local ore international NGOs do not solely play a role as a “pass through” channel for funding, but can also provide groups of well-trained experts to build capacity for older people and local government’s staff. Vietnam’s local government at commune and provincial levels, on the other hand, have a wide network of local staff at grass-root level and they can contribute funds for the projects.
Thirdly, the policy approach is based on local ownership and grass-root democracy. As each club is set up, operated and sustained by local people themselves, it creates true incentive for people to hold responsibility and careful consider consequences of decisions they make for the community. “Local ownership is critically important in order to improve aid programs’ effectiveness and to give local people a voice and a stake in their own future” (Kaplan, 2013). Local people are not simply recipients of funded-programs but also the main drivers, deciding impacts of programs. This local management also enables community to raise their voice and communicate with people who is able to make decisions. The approach will ensure long-term, sustainable impacts of public programs.
CONCLUSION
Strong commissioning and networked governance approached should gradually be promoted in public management of Vietnam. Mobilizing active collaboration from different actors towards common goals is a challenging but not an impossible task. This policy approach is capable of mitigating multi-facet and inhomogeneous challenges embraced by rapid ageing process and creating long term impact. Policy environment today is full of complexities; there will never be a perfect condition or enough budgets, simple issues and no boundaries. Therefore, policy design should take consideration of surrounding environments such as local potential and stakeholders’ strengths to set a path for collaborative co-ordination.
