At the break of dawn on a June 2014 weekday, the park along Hoàn Kiếm Lake in Hanoi comes alive with a group composed largely of retirees practicing morning dance routines, one of the defining elementsTuổi Trẻ – The pulse of morning life in Vietnam, 2025 of daily life in the Southeast Asian country. The community activity serves to foster social harmony, strengthens social bonds, maintain fitness and stay active. Dancing offers multiple health benefits, including positive effects on posture and balanceFrontiers in Aging Neuroscience – Superior Sensory, Motor, and Cognitive Performance in Elderly Individuals with Multi-Year Dancing Activities, 2010 that help prevent the risk of falls among elders, as well as psychological and cognitiveThe University of Sydney – Dancing may be better than other exercise for improving mental health, 2010 outcomes.

Those elderly dancers belong to Vietnam’s fastest-growing demographic group. The country entered its golden population period in 2007, when the working-age cohort started to significantly outnumber youth and elderly dependents. The period, however, described by the United Nations as a “demographic window of opportunity”, is expected to end in the mid-2030sNational Statistics Office – Vietnam population projections, 2025 as Vietnam’s older population nearly doubles over the next two decades.

The ongoing ageing of the Vietnamese population underscores the environmental stakes of a demographic transition. Researchers found that emissions of Earth-warming gases in South KoreaInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health – Do Aging and Low Fertility Reduce Carbon Emissions in Korea, 2020 and ChinaStructural Change and Economic Dynamics – Analysis of China's urban household indirect carbon emissions drivers under the background of population aging, 2021 decline as age increases. A comparable age-emissions profile was observedWorld Economic Forum – Why our ageing populations could help slow greenhouse emissions, 2015 across Western countries. Yet, generational differences in consumption patterns and the associated environmental footprint remain largely unassessedUnited Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific – Climate Change and Population Ageing in the Asia-Pacific Region, 2022 in Vietnam, complicated further by the continuing growth in absolute numbers of the working-age consumer cohort. Also, gains from an ageing population could be outweighed by increased per-household resource and energy demand resulting from Vietnam’s gradual shiftGeneral Statistics Office – Household Structure, 2022 from multi-generational households to nuclear and single-person units.

At Hoàn Kiếm Lake, elders danced under the gaze of Lý Thái Tổ and a facade bearing the logo of the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV). The former, a Vietnamese emperor who reigned in the early 11th century, is credited with laying the foundations for what would become the golden ageSocialist Republic of Viet Nam – About Viet Nam of Vietnam’s history, then known as Dai Viet. The latter, founded in 1957 and now the largest public bankBIDV – BIDV Review, 2024 in Vietnam, has played a major roleBIDV – History of BIDV in funnelling capital to drive the country’s emergence as a manufacturing center following the 1986 Đổi MớiMitsubishi UFJ Financial Group – Vietnam: Doi Moi 2.0, 2025 policy shift that ended central planning by the ruling Communist Party. Moving beneath the legacies of past transformations, the morning exercisers are part of Vietnam’s latest structural change, a demographic shift with implications for resource use and environmental demand.