The Renovation era in Vietnam (since 1986) has been a period of dramatic social change
accompanied by large volume of internal migration. This study aims to identify a link between
migration and the rapid decline of fertility levels among Vietnamese women in the last stage of the
fertility transition in Vietnam. Data from the Vietnam Demographic and Health Survey 2002 was
used to examine three theories of socialization, adaptation and migration on women’s fertility.
These theories are examined by fitting both OLS and Poisson regression models for the number of
children ever born. The results most strongly support the adaptation theory after controlling for
education, age, age at marriage and wanted fertility. Women adapt to the fertility norms at their
place of current residence to a greater extent than their place of birth. More specifically, among
women born in rural areas, those who currently live in urban areas have 17 percent fewer children
ever born than those who live in rural areas. This seems to be primarily due to adaptation to the
new environment rather than to the act of migration itself, suggesting that migrating was not
associated with lower or higher fertility during the Renovation era in Vietnam.