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Welcome to the forum.

ID cards are issued by the Ministry of Public Security and new style cards were issued in 2015.
These are used for local travel and for ID if asked to produce it.

Thanks Stumpy for the welcome and for the reply.

Do you know if everyone has an ID card universally (I mean Laotian citizens), or is it not unusual for people not to have one - especially young people, who seem to only become eligible at 16.

Thanks!

As far as I know my Lao friends all have a card as does my wife and 2 daughters.

Thank you

You are welcome.

Passports are easier to get these days. Our youngest daughter was born in Thailand with Thai birth certificate. The birth was registered in the family book in the Lao village where the wife was born. Had no ID card then and she was given a passport.

No ID was asked for when traveling between Laos and Thailand whilst she was young and with her mother.

I think there is a more relaxed attitude with regard to the ID card now. In the early days you had to produce one if traveling from one province to another and you had to register with the nearest police station on arrival.

I think, it's depend social class. In country side where I lived before, most of people doesn't have ID cards . Most of them never moved farest than 30- 40 km from their village and don't have bank account neither. For exemple I know a family, nobody's have bank account. When exceptionally they need to receive money, they use the bank account of some else who take "taxes" for the "service". Make ID card or bank account cost money and some Lao people are very poor, and when they get some money it's not a priority and not useful for them. Also a lot of them, or some of them, older than 30 don't know how to read and write.

I think now that the ID to have would be the Covid-19 vaccination card.
Any comments?

If no ID Card, person must provide Family Book (Document).

Whilst your post is technically correct, in all my time and travels in Laos with my family We have never been asked to produce the family book.

When applying for passports the book was asked for.