The nation's divorce rate has grown nearly four-fold in 12 years, according to government figures that were released yesterday.
The tallies compiled by the Ministry of the Interior's Population Administration Department indicated that in 1983, 160,288 couples got married and 17,528 couples were divorced.
Meanwhile, the number of marriages slid to 131,453 and the number of divorces increased sharply to 62,796 last year.
more divorces
Last year's divorce figure was 3.6 times the 1983 figure, the tallies show.
There were 55,460 divorced men in 1983, accounting for 1.1 percent of the total male population in that year, according to the statistics.
But the number of divorced men has surged in number, nearly five-fold to 224,934 last year, representing 5 percent of all men.
Meanwhile, the number of divorced women has increased from 63,526 in 1983 to 391,090 last year, with the percentage increasing from 1.3 percent to 6.2 percent, the statistics indicated.
later marriages
At the same time, men and women are marrying later, with the average marrying age for men and women advancing to 30.7 and 26.8 years respectively, up from 28.2 and 24.6 in 1983.
The birth rate also dropped to a record low of 1.24 per couple last year, prompting grave concern from the government over international competitiveness in the long term.
To tackle the problem of a rapidly aging population in Taiwan, the ministry is working on a population white paper in June that will suggest that more handsome incentives and subsidies be offered to encourage more people to have more children.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the