During the Vietnam War, the Communist government of North Vietnam was successful in limiting the country’s social problems to those directly connected with the war effort. Although malnutrition and poverty were common, corruption was rare and the incidence of drugs, prostitution, and crime was limited.

Following the war, Vietnam developed high rates of birth defects, probably due to the aerial spraying of Agent Orange and other chemical herbicides during the war. The U.S. military sprayed these defoliants on forests and crops to help expose the hiding places of Communist forces. As a consequence, innumerable Vietnamese were exposed to extremely toxic byproducts known as dioxins, which have been associated with severe birth defects and certain rare cancers in humans. Toxins that leaked into croplands and rivers around the sprayed areas also had long-term effects on the food supply of the country as a whole. Tests conducted after the war showed that considerable levels of dioxins were present in fish, a staple of the Vietnamese diet, and in milk from nursing mothers.