With the national economic balance dependant on the strength of a young workforce, the alarmingly low birthrate in Taiwan has provoked the government's concern, with the Council for Economic Planning and Development predicting that by 2051 39 percent of the population will consist of elderly citizens.
The socio-economic reasons for the trend were tackled at a forum that was organized by the Youth Labor Alliance, a non-profit organization.
One of the lowest
According to this year's statistics from the Ministry of Interior (MOI), with a birthrate of an average 1.18 children per family, Taiwan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. This is in comparison to MOI statistics from 2003, where Italy had a birthrate of 1.2, France 1.9 and the US 2.0.
According to Huang Tsang-ling (
"One shouldn't regard the problem of a low birthrate in isolation [from other factors], but should consider it in relation to the condition of the environment that children are brought up in," Huang said.
Labor conditions
According to Liu Mei-chun (劉梅君), who is a professor at the Institute for Labor Research at National Chengchi University, labor conditions in Taiwan are such that many couples do not have the economic resources or the mental energy to have children.
"With many employers taking the attitude that work is allocated on the basis of `duty,' there is a lot of overtime. Furthermore, the majority of this isn't paid for," Liu said.
According to statistics released from human resource companies in Taiwan this year, Taiwanese employees work an average of 50 hours a week, and statistics from the Council of Labor show that the average salary for a new employee is just NT$23,910 (US$710), a decrease from the average salary in 1997 of NT$24,014 (US$714).
A guest speaker surnamed Huang who worked in the restaurant business was invited to share her experiences, and spoke of how she and her colleagues worked 12-18 hour shifts every day.
"I also missed an opportunity to get married because of my work conditions. My partner at the time used to always have to wait for me for at least two hours after my shift was supposed to have finished, which put a big strain on things," she said.
Discrimination
Liu said that another factor which discouraged childbirth was discrimination in the workplace against women who get pregnant.
"Seventy percent of cases dealing with sexual discrimination in the workplace in Taipei City and Taipei County are related to the termination of women's employment upon pregnancy," Liu said.
According to Tsai Hsiao-ling (蔡曉玲), a kindergarten teacher and a member of an organization against the privatization of kindergartens, there isn't enough government support for children's education.
"With a reimbursement of NT$10,000 per year, parents still need to pay an average of NT$7,700 per month for private kindergartens. The ratio of public to private kindergartens is 3-to-7," she said.
Tsai further stated that with an increase in the privatization of kindergartens due to an emphasis on a free market, competition was high, with the result that children are treated like commodities.
"In a school's memorandum to staff and faculty in Tainan, it said, `children are our assets. Our aim is to cram our school with as many kids as possible.' How can we expect the quality of education to be good with an attitude like this?" she said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift