After a month of online voting, Internet users have chosen “Children are our most precious treasures (孩子~是我們最好的傳家寶)” as the winning slogan in a contest organized by the Ministry of the Interior aimed at encouraging couples to have more babies.
Nearly 30,000 people submitted entries from the end of March to June before an 11-member panel selected 20 slogans for an Internet vote last month.
The overall winner was submitted by a 32-year-old Taichung woman, Chang Chih-ching (張芝菁).
Chang will receive a NT$1 million prize from the ministry and the winning slogan will be printed on government literature, the ministry said.
Second in the online vote was the slogan “Happiness is very easy, baby one, two, three,” followed by “It’s good to have a child.”
The government has been offering various incentives in an unsuccessful bid to boost birth rates, amid growing concerns that a severe manpower shortage will trigger serious social and economic problems.
Taipei, where birth rates dived to an all-time low last year with fewer than 20,000 babies being born, will start paying couples NT$20,000 for every newborn from next year.
The nation’s overall birth rate stood at 8.29 births per 1,000 people last year, the ministry said. That compares with a global average of more than 20 births per 1,000 people, according to the UN.
Last year, 191,310 babies were born in Taiwan, down 3.74 percent from the previous year.
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