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Divorces are up and birth rate way down, figures show

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.
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