Print

Mail

wiki links

Birth rate reflects women's plight

`When the government and businesses in Taiwan focus solely on economic production and growth, our families and individuals (particularly women) are left having to shoulder society's "reproduction" costs and its consequences. Under such circum-stances, women's wombs have collectively staged a silent strike.'

Reports that the birth rate in Taiwan has hit a record low has prompted endless discussion in all walks of life. The government and the people have come up with numerous causes for and solutions to the declining birth rate. We have become preoccupied with debate on incentives for having a third child, restricting abortions, the costs of child-rearing and the values of contemporary society.

Some scholars have even called for taxes to be levied on healthy, single people over the age of 40 with no offspring. They argued that this group of "indolent individuals" has not fulfilled its social duty to produce a second generation. From "single troublemaker" to "single parasite," this group of singles has been labeled with unflattering names for not living up to the responsibility of procreating.

Officials and experts, when considering new policies aimed at rasing the birth rate in the short term, should spend time investigating the long-term, structural factors underlying the low birth rate.

Taiwan is not alone in having a declining birth rate. In industrialized, developed countries, officials have also tried desperately stop the decline in birth rates that have, in many cases, become a serious, national concern.

The Scandinavian countries were the first to address this problem. As early as the 1970s, the birth rate was already lower than the mortality rate. In the 1980s, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development also began to worry about the low birth rate, a phenomenon that risks giving rise to future shortages of labor, an upside-down population structure and the inability of the young to generate sufficient tax revenues to support the increasing elderly population.

Of course, in the eyes of nationalists, the declining birth rate also suggests the weakening of national power. So the issue raises many questions. Why are people beginning to refuse to have children? Or why are they having fewer and fewer children?

While solutions to the problem vary from one country to another, meticulous studies have shown that the causes of declining birth rates are very similar. The only cause that can clearly explain the problem is the entry of a greater number of women into the job market.

Scholars have discovered that the curves reflecting the declining birth rate and women's increasing participation in the labor market form a perfect "X" shape. So as more women enter the job mar-ket, fewer babies will be born. Why? Is it just a coincidence?

Economists have argued that the declining birth rate is attributable to the increase in opportunity cost for child-rearing in modern society. But new studies have presented different stories. The declining birth rate, lower than the normal substitution rate for an existing population, is not necessarily a characteristic of modern society. It may be an index of social discontent -- those women who are capable of producing children are unable to strike a balance between family and work in ways of their own choosing. When women are working, they find that being able to look after both their families and their careers is impossible.

Many women leave the job market when they become pregnant. But when they return after a few years, they find that they are no longer employable or they are forced to accept jobs that pay much less. Highly educated women, who suffer the highest opportunity cost of choosing child-bearing over work, form the group with the most sharply declining birth rate.

Perhaps many will say it is a matter of personal choice. Whether to be single or childless is a life decision. It is interesting to note that those who are single or child-less are mostly women, particularly highly educated, career women. Can our social system provide alternatives? Why are women always compelled to decide between family and work?

According to a comparative study on declining birth rates in four countries (the US, Sweden, Germany, and Japan), Sweden was the only country with a high female labor participation rate as well as a high birth rate. Many Japanese and American women choose to quit their jobs. The female labor participation rate in Germany is also marked by a declining birth rate. So what are the factors underlying the simultaneous existence of a high female labor participation rate and the high birth rate in Sweden?

When Sweden needed a large number of females to join the nation's work force during a period of economic growth in the late 1960s, the government introduced a number of female-friendly policies. The most important feature of this legislation was that the government took the initiative to get involved in child care, establishing a large number of high-quality day-nurseries at reasonable prices in the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, the government introduced insurance measures in 1974 to subsidize parents who went on paternity and maternity leave. Next, the government passed a law to reduce the working day from eight hours to six for parents with children younger than eight years of age at home.

According to surveys, however, Swedish women remain dissatisfied. Besides paid maternity leave, flexible working hours and first-rate nursery services, they want their husbands to take more responsibility for the family and for child care. They want the government to make child-care leave compulsory for both parents.

When the government and businesses in Taiwan focus solely on economic production and growth, our families and individuals (particularly women) are left having to shoulder society's "reproduction" costs and its consequences. Under such circumstances, women's wombs have collectively staged a silent strike. Who should take the blame, then, for Taiwan's declining birth rate?

Fan Yun is an assistant research fellow of the Institute of Sociology at the Academia Sinica.

Translated by Grace Shaw
This story has been viewed 2873 times.