The Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (
Major changes in the population involve aging and urbanization. In 1999, citizens aged over 65 accounted for 8.5 percent of the population. According to a survey by the Ministry of the Interior at the end of September this year, the figure has gone up to 8.6 percent, qualifying Taiwan as an "aged society."
On the other hand, 68 percent of the population now lives in urban areas. In fact, the Taipei-Keelung area has become the biggest metropolitan area with 6.45 million residents. Kaohsiung is the second biggest with 2.7 million, followed by Taichung-Changhua with 2.05 million, Chungli-Taoyuan with 1.68 million and Tainan with 1.2 million. The impact of urbanization has significantly changed the overall lifestyle, necessitating new standards for the future division of administrative districts.
With the continuing march toward wealth, average family income has increased annually. Gaps in income distribution have however, widened slightly over the past two years following a slight narrowing in 1996 after more than 10 years of continuous expansion since 1980. How to maintain the "wealth for all" ideal is a question the government must further consider.
Research and development are another yardstick for progress. Since the 1990s, the figures relating to R&D, such as the budget to GDP ratio, the number of researchers per 10,000 people, the budget allowed for each researcher, the total number of research papers produced and patent applications approved in the US have all been rising significantly.
Since 1994, private enterprises have accounted for more than half of overall R&D expenditures, surpassing that of the government and government-run enterprises. In 1998, private enterprises accounted for 59.4 percent of overall expenditure, while the government's share fell to 33.5 percent from 42.2 percent in 1994. Government-run enterprises shared more than 10 percent of R&D expenditure in the 1980s, but the figure declined to 5.7 percent in 1998.
From these statistics, we can establish that over the past six years, the government and government-run enterprises have pumped in much less money than the private sector. In comparison, the R&D capabilities of non-profit organizations (foundations) has been poor over the past 20 years.
The globalization of information was another new social phenome-non. First of all, the number of mobile phone users has soared from 83,000 in 1990 to 11.5 million in 1999, more than half the entire population. Second, the number of Internet users jumped from 600,000 in 1996 to 4.8 million in 1999, more than 20 percent of the population. Third, outgoing international phone calls totaled 958 million minutes in 1999, up from 200 million minutes in 1990.
In contrast to these three indicators of information globaliza-tion, traditional indicators, such as the number of international telegrams, the number of international telegraph exchanges, the volume of domestic long-distance phone calls and the number of pager users, have fallen steeply. Among these, there is an obvious interchangeability between the Internet and domestic long-distance phone calls, as well as the Internet and international telegrams. Mobile phones have not only replaced pagers, but also alleviated pressure from the growing number of intra-city phone users and made international phone calls more convenient.
The number of civic organizations has increased every year. Both professional and non-professional organizations have proliferated. In 1999, there were 8,251 professional organizations, including 3,831 labor unions. Social groups numbered as high as 15,309. The number of community development associations has risen from 2,312 in 1993 to 5,245 in 1999. In other words, people's inclinations to form organizations has developed since the abolition of martial law.
From 1987 to 1994, gatherings and parades increased dramatically, from a mere 1,233 to 11,294 per year. But the number fell somewhat in the subsequent three years -- 6,678 in 1995, 3,577 in 1996, and 4,152 in 1997. The number suddenly rose to 7,808 in 1998, but slumped again to 1,265 in 1999. Political meetings and demonstrations constituted the majority of assemblies over the past 10 years, followed by social meetings. Those concerning economic affairs constituted only a small number. In 1999, however, the number of social demonstrations and meetings exceeded that of political ones for the first time. This is an interesting change that calls for further discussion. Is it an isolated development or the beginning of another new trend?
The economy survived the Asian financial crisis and has maintained its moderate growth rate, but unemployment problems have begun to surface. Since the service industry became the biggest employer for the first time in 1988 -- outshining manufacturing -- its status as the leading sector has become all the more pronounced. Meanwhile, unemployment has soared over the past six years, reaching 2.921 percent in 1999, the highest in two decades. Unemployment has continued to worsen this year, and was at 3.16 percent in August.
Labor disputes have also escalated over the past decade, though the number of workers joining the disputes has remained at around 30,000 per year, except for 1997 and 1998 when the numbers rose dramatically due to some unique cases. It is also worth noting that an unemployment insurance program was launched in 1999. The results of that program call for further observation and assessment.
Michael Hsiao is a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica.
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