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Interior Ministry still working on population paper

The Ministry of the Interior has yet to flesh out a white paper on the government's future population policy, a ministry official said yesterday.

Su Ching-chao (蘇清朝), deputy director of the ministry's Population Administration Department, was responding to a newspaper report that the government will offer tax incentives to encourage child birth, including offering tax deductions for children born out of wedlock.

According to the media report, the decision was made during an interministerial meeting called by the ministry last week.

Su said the ministry had invited officials from the Council for Economic Planning and Development and other government agencies as well as representatives of private associations to discuss the contents of a proposed white paper on population policy last Thursday.

"The meeting focused discussions on general policy directions regarding population quality, number and distribution and has yet to touch on specific measures for encouraging child birth," Su said.

He acknowledged that the meeting was held with a view of addressing population trends, including declining birth rates and a greying population.

Su said a consensus has yet to be reached on any specific measures.

"The media report about an initial consensus on offering tax deductions for children born to unmarried women was not correct," Su said.

He stressed that the ministry is still working on the contents of the population white paper and will try to finalize a package of guidelines as soon as possible.

According to the media report, some government officials voiced support at the meeting for the proposed tax deductions for children born out of wedlock. They said the measure probably could encourage women unwilling to marry but willing to have children to go ahead and do so, thereby helping increase the birth rate.

Statistics compiled by the ministry show that the number of adults who are not married is approaching 25 percent of the total population.

A study released by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also showed that more than 50 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 29 remained unmarried last year and that the ratio of local women responding to a DGBAS survey who said they would not have children has increased to 2.45 percent from 1.2 percent recorded in a previous survey.

Meanwhile, Department of Health officials said the number of fetuses aborted annually has been estimated at 280,000 to 300,000, with more than half of these belonging to unmarried women.

Some ministry officials said the proposed tax deductions for children born to unmarried women are not aimed at encouraging child birth out of wedlock. The proposed measure could only serve as part of the efforts to raise the birth rate, the officials said, adding that many other measures are needed to realize that goal.
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