The government has challenged the results of a World Population Review report, which said that Taiwan has the lowest fertility rate in the world at 1.218 children per woman.
The California-based organization’s Fertility Rate by Country report ranked Taiwan at the bottom of a list of 200 nations.
Other nations with total fertility rates similar to Taiwan’s were Moldova (1.23 children per woman), Portugal (1.26) and Poland (1.29), the report said.
However, the National Development Council on Sunday said in a news release that the rate for Taiwan did not match its data.
The government’s statistics for last year showed that Taiwan’s fertility rate was 1.06, which is lower than the figure in the report, but not the lowest in the world, because South Korea’s total fertility rate was 0.98 last year, the council said.
However, the council cited data from last year, while the report was based on UN data from 2017.
The government is making efforts to improve the environment for raising children, with the goal of increasing the total fertility rate to 1.4 by 2030, the council said.
The report said that the birth rate in Taiwan was below the rate needed to sustain population growth, which hinges on increased longevity.
The nation has a population of about 23.76 million, the 56th-largest in the world, the report said, forecasting that the figure would peak at 24.15 million in 10 years before starting to decline.
The median age in Taiwan is 40.7 years, meaning half of the population is older than 40 and would soon be out of the workforce, it said.
As of last month, the world’s total population was just more than 7.71 billion, the report said, adding that the five countries with the highest fertility rates were all in Africa: Niger (7.153), Somalia (6.123), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (5.963), Mali (5.922) and Chad (5.797).
In Asia, the Philippines ranked 65th worldwide with a total fertility rate of 2.882, Japan ranked 179th (1.478) and South Korea ranked 194th (1.323), it said.
India (2.303) and China (1.635), two of the most densely populated countries, ranked 94th and 164th, respectively, it added.
The data for China and India likely reflected government policies and cultural expectations concerning reproduction, the World Population Review said.
The highest fertility rates in Europe were in Ireland (1.98) and France (1.973), while the US had a rate of 1.886, ranking it 135th, the report said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,