Emerging economies face major data gaps in modeling material transitions, especially for building stocks and demolition. This study develops a lifespan-differentiated, stock-driven dynamic material flow analysis for Vietnam's residential sector (1986–2050), integrating socio-economic decomposition and circular-economy assessment under data scarcity. Using the Residential Building Material Metabolism and Efficiency Assessment Framework, we reconstruct material inflows, in-use stocks, and demolition outflows; identify socio-economic drivers through Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index decomposition; and compare legacy-stock circular-economy scenarios. Results reveal a pronounced shift toward long-lived, cement-intensive housing and indicate that demolition outflows are likely to peak in the 2040s due to accumulated stock inertia and lifetime structure. Although material inflows show partial decoupling from GDP, floor-area expansion and service-level improvement remain dominant drivers of long-term stock growth. The scenario analysis is intentionally bounded to the accumulated residential stock under a no-new-inflow-after-2023 condition. Within this boundary, selective dismantling–based recovery (SD) is more effective for landfill reduction, whereas lifetime extension (LE) yields stronger embodied-CO 2 mitigation by reducing replacement demand; combining SD and LE provides the strongest overall result. These findings should be interpreted as comparative conditional estimates rather than forecasts, indicating that slowing-loop and closing-loop strategies affect different components of the stock–flow system. The results further indicate that housing-service expansion and structural upgrading reinforce upstream material demand and contribute to long-term stock-related lock-in in the residential system. The study contributes a typology-resolved, lifespan-differentiated framework for analyzing residential material dynamics under data scarcity and offers bounded comparative insights for stock-driven circular-economy assessment in emerging economies. • First national lifespan-resolved MFA of Vietnam's residential building stock. • Demolition wave peaks in 2040s, driven by ageing permanent housing cohorts. • Inflows decouple from GDP, but demolition tightly follows accumulated stock. • Selective dismantling cuts ∼90% landfill; lifetime extension yields CO 2 savings. • Hybrid SD + LE delivers strongest combined landfill and climate benefits.
Nguyen et al. (Fri,) studied this question.