Last week, Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲), while addressing a group of academics at the institute, said that "Taiwan is the second-most densely populated nation in the world. Since the nation has to rely on imports from other countries as a result of its rather limited natural resources, we would be better off with a smaller population."
Lee went on to say that: "The government has presented an erroneous concept when it said that there would be nobody to take care of the nation's senior citizens if we do not increase birth rates. Therefore, the nation's population policy should be reviewed."
Formulating a population policy is a rather complicated issue. It is also somewhat difficult to define an optimum population size, for there are a variety of variables and parameters to consider, such as national goals, social values and available resources. Nevertheless, it should be possible to seek out a generally acceptable basis for determining whether or not a nation is overpopulated.
The basis that Lee proposed is generally accepted as "population density." However, I wonder if what he said about Taiwan's population is true. That depends on what definitions we adopt. Under a strict definition, Taiwan -- with an average population density of 630 people per square kilometer -- is at most one of the most densely populated economies, trailing behind Bangladesh and a host of smaller economies such as Macau, Monaco, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bahrain, Bermuda, the Maldives and Malta.
Macau with its 20,000 people per square kilometer and Morocco with 17,000 people per square kilometer should be ranked the top two most denseley populated economies.
Under a looser definition, looking at medium and large-sized economies, Taiwan is indeed the world's second-most densely populated economy, trailing only Bangladesh with its 1,069 people per square kilometer.
So how high is Taiwan's population density? The average worldwide human population density is 49 people per square kilometer while the population density of the 29 economies with the highest GDP stands at only 30 people per square kilometer.
That is, Taiwan's population density is 21 times higher than that of the highest-income nations and 1.3 times higher than South Korea, which has 487 people per square kilometer, the Netherlands with 481 people per square kilometer and Puerto Rico at 439 people per square kilometer.
In terms of Taiwan's urban areas, the average population density has reached more than 3,000 people per square kilometer, and the average population density in both Taipei and Kaohsiung has climbed to 10,000 people per square kilometer, exceeding both Hong Kong and Singapore at above 6,000 people per square kilometer.
Taiwan is even worse off than Singapore and Hong Kong, for these two areas have a lot of high-rise buildings, while Taiwan's metropolitan population is squeezed into low-rise buildings, making space even more cramped, to the point that with the exception of the posher districts in Taipei, there is no space for holding activities or even taking a walk.
When people walk through the arcades and alleys of Taipei's Wanhua District or Jhonghe, Banciao and Sinjhuang cities, they will quickly sense the lack of space which has seriously influenced the quality of life of 80 percent of people living in metropolitan areas. The lack of space in Taiwan cannot be found in any other advanced nation.
Given these considerations, I agree with Lee's take on the issue. Therefore, the government should re-consider its population policy which aims to increase birth rates. At present, the government believes that the low birth rate will result in a bad population structure and a situation in which young people will have to take care of senior citizens.
However, this argument is rather odd, for most people these days are able to work until the age of 70 and do not need to be cared for for very long.
Second, most senior citizens use their own savings to care for themselves, which means they are by no means a burden on society.
Third, a large portion of the funds used to pay for those senior citizens who are cared for through the national pension program comes from tax contributions made by those retired people after many years of work. That means that the burden on young people, if any, is limited.
Therefore, it is more important to emulate Japan's policies for the elderly and enhance the competitiveness of future generations and reduce the government's burden than it is to raise the birth rate.
Tu Jenn-hwa is an associate professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Daniel Cheng
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