Demographics of Vietnam

This article is about the demographic features of the population of Vietnam, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.

Originating in northern Vietnam, the Vietnamese people pushed southward over two millennia to occupy the entire eastern seacoast of the Indochinese Peninsula. Ethnic Vietnamese, or Viet (known officially as Kinh), live in the lowlands and speak the Vietnamese language. This group dominates much of the cultural and political landscape of Vietnam.

Population

Vital statistics

Ethnic groups

Ethnolinguistic map of Indochina, 1970

The Vietnamese government recognizes 54 ethnic groups, of which the Viet (Kinh) is the largest; according to official Vietnamese figures (2009 census), ethnic Vietnamese account for 85.7% of the nation's population and the non-Vietnamese ethnic groups account for the remaining percent. The ethnic Vietnamese inhabit a little less than half of Vietnam, while the ethnic minorities inhabit the majority of Vietnam's land (albeit the least fertile parts of the country).

The Khmer Krom are found in the delta of the Mekong River, in the south of Vietnam, where they form in many areas the majority of the rural population. They live in an area which was previously part of Cambodia and which Vietnam conquered in the 17th and 18th centuries. Official Vietnamese figures put the Khmer Krom at 1 million people. Vietnam's approximately 1 million ethnic Chinese, constitute one of Vietnam's largest minority groups. Long important in the Vietnamese economy, Vietnamese of Chinese ancestry have been active in rice trading, milling, real estate, and banking in the south and shopkeeping, stevedoring, and mining in the north. Restrictions on economic activity following reunification in 1975 and the subsequent but unrelated general deterioration in Vietnamese-Chinese relations sent chills through the Chinese-Vietnamese community.

The relation between China and Vietnam also declined in this period, with Vietnam siding with the Soviet Union against China in the Chinese-Soviet split. Tensions peaked when Vietnam invaded Cambodia, an ally of China, to depose Pol Pot, resulting in a Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979. In 1978-79, some 450,000 ethnic Chinese left Vietnam by boat as refugees (many officially encouraged and assisted) or were expelled across the land border with China. In recent years the government has performed an about turn and is encouraging overseas Hoa to return and invest, but the ethnic Chinese population has been in continuous decline since the 1970s due to assimilation and low birth rates.

The central highland peoples commonly termed Degar or Montagnards (mountain people) comprise two main ethnolinguistic groups--Malayo-Polynesian and Mon–Khmer. About 30 groups of various cultures and dialects are spread over the highland territory.

Other minority groups include the Cham—remnants of the once-mighty Champa Kingdom, conquered by the Vietnamese in the 15th century, Hmong, and Tai ("Thái").

Language

Vietnamese is the official language of the country. It belongs to the Austroasiatic language family, which also includes languages such as Khmer and Mon. Vietnamese was spoken by 85-90 million people in Vietnam at the 1999 census. In the early 21st century, around another four million Vietnamese speakers are found outside of Vietnam. Thus Vietnamese is the most spoken language of the Austroasiatic family, being spoken by three times more people than the second most spoken language of the family, Khmer. Both languages, however, are extremely different: Vietnamese is a tonal, monosyllabic, phonetic language while Khmer has remained non-tonal. Vietnamese was heavily influenced by Chinese and a small part of the Vietnamese vocabulary is Chinese, while Khmer was heavily influenced by Sanskrit and Pali and a great part of its vocabulary is now made up of Indian words, so that both languages look very dissimilar on the surface. Since the early 20th century, the Vietnamese have used a Romanized script introduced by the French. (See Vietnamese language and Vietnamese alphabet).

Religions

Only a small fraction of the Vietnamese adheres to institutional religions, according to the 2009 official census.^[12]

• Vietnamese Folk Religion, 34.7%
• Buddhism, 57.5%
• Christianity, 6.2%
  • Roman Catholic, 5.7%
  • Protestant, 0.5%
• Hòa Hảo, 1.5%
• Cao Đài, 1.1%

Estimates for the year 2010 published by the Pew Research Center:^[13]

• Vietnamese folk religion, 34.0%
• Buddhism, 59.2%
• Christianity, 6.8%

CIA World Factbook demographic statistics

Population pyramid 2017

The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.

See also

• Racism in Vietnam
• List of ethnic groups in Vietnam
• Overseas Vietnamese

Sources

• 2006 Vietnam's population estimates
• 1999 Census results
• Socioeconomic Atlas of Vietnam

References