The number of families living below the poverty line nationwide has skyrocketed to nearly 90,000, a new high since 1981 when figures were first compiled, the Ministry of the Interior said.
This year's figure of 86,700 low-income households nationwide marks a 4.29 percent increase in the number of poor families over 2005, the ministry said in a press release yesterday.
The 86,700 low-income households were home to 211,975 people, the release added.
The ministry's Department of Social Affairs spokesman Chen Chi-hsun (
The department cited two main factors for the increase.
"A natural increase and amendments to the Social Service and Rescue Law [社會救助法] are behind the changes," the release said. "The natural increase refers to the increase in the cost of living, which naturally drives up the number of low-income households."
The statement added that recent amendments to the Social Service and Rescue Law relaxed restrictions regarding the cut-off criteria in determining which families are living below the poverty line.
That is, the ministry is counting more households as "low-income" in order to make them eligible for government assistance, Chen said.
According to the ministry, the criteria for making such determinations is more liberal than in previous years, with "cross-border, single-parent, Aboriginal, elderly and other households that are often hard to define as living above or below the poverty level" receiving more help from the government in recent years.
Statistics released by the ministry suggested that the ranks of the poor are increasing in both rural and urban communities, with the highest number of impoverished people residing in Taitung County.
A total of 101,300 of the county's 230,000 registered residents live below the poverty line whereas in Taipei County, long considered the nation's most developed region, the number of families living below the poverty line has increased by 10 percent per year, with 10,963 families of the total 26,896 considered to be low-income.
The number of poor families in Kaohsiung County, meanwhile, increased to 3,310 last year from 2,700 in 2005, it added, citing credit card debt and unemployment as chief factors for the rise.
The release added that, with a 20 percent yearly increase in the number of low-income families, Kaohsiung County is home to the highest increase in such households.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai