Inadequate finances, inability to buy a home and long work hours are the three major reasons for Taiwan’s low birthrate, according to a yes123 online job bank survey released yesterday.
The survey found that 63 percent of office workers aged 20 and above who responded to the poll had no children and of those, 48 percent did not plan to start a family.
In answering a multiple-choice question about why they did not want children, 66.3 percent of those respondents said they were worried about earning enough to raise a child, 42.2 percent said they could not afford to buy a home for a family and 28.9 percent said they were too busy with work.
Photo: Tyrone Siu, Reuters
Other reasons cited were dissatisfaction with the nation’s education system (23.5 percent) and concerns about serious social problems and the effect on children (21.9 percent).
The survey results show the nation’s low birthrate is related to not only low salary levels, pay freezes and long working hours, but also high housing prices, the educational environment and social order, yes123 spokesman Yang Tsung-bin (楊宗斌) said.
The survey also found that respondents believe it takes an average monthly household income of about NT$102,210 to raise a child: NT$108,435 in the six special municipalities and NT$86,971 in other cities and counties.
Based on those findings, the best way for the government to boost the birthrate would be to increase the minimum wage and call on companies to raise salaries through industrial transformation, while working to improve social welfare and social security, the company said.
The survey was conducted from March 15 to Tuesday last week among job seekers aged 20 and above through online questionnaires, with 1,236 valid samples collected, including 692 from people who are married (434 of whom have children) and 544 from single people (23 who have children).
It had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 2.79 percentage points.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
RSS