After many years of implementing the population - family planning work, the province has controlled its population growth rate, bringing the birth rate to the birth replacement rate in 2012 with 2.08 babies per woman. 

Statistics during 2015-2019 showed that the annual average birth rate in Yen Bai was 2.82 children per woman per year, placing it among three provinces with the highest birth rate nationwide. It is forecast that the rate will continue growing in coming years without active and effective intervention. 

The province set the goal of performing the double task of raising public awareness of having few children together with fulfilling targets for population and development work. 

Yen Bai will call for limiting early marriages and birth delivery and giving birth to many children. Couples are urged to get married before turning 30 while women should give birth to a second child before 35. Further attention will be paid to eliminating old customs in marriages, preventing early marriages among ethnic minorities, raising the sense of law abidance in marriages, as well as harms and consequences of early marriage. 

At the same time, the province added the criterion of not having a third or more children in villages’ regulations, which will lay a foundation to recognise wards and communes for meeting cultural standards. 

In remote, ethnic and poor areas, the locality highlighted a need to provide suitable family planning services for residents, continue holding awareness campaigns and distribute contraception tools based on the community via a network of local medical staff and population collaborators.

Yen Bai set the target of reducing annual average birth rate by 0.12 child per women during 2021-2025. Till 2025, the rate will be below 2.3 children per woman and local population will near 870,000.