Taiwan has a population of 24 million, about half that of Spain and equal to that of the US state of Florida.
Depending on the study, the total fertility rate (TFR) in Taiwan ranges from 0.87 to 1.2. TFR is the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime. A TFR of 2.1 is needed for a country to maintain its population.
Taiwan has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.
If its low fertility rate does not reverse, Taiwan would face a shrinking workforce and an aging population, which would mean less state revenue collected from taxes and more money spent on care for elderly people.
A decreasing population would also become a significant security issue with fewer people available to defend the country and keep the economy robust.
Over the past decade, the government has implemented and expanded several policies to support working mothers.
First, there are subsidies for the first in vitro fertilization treatment at NT$100,000 (US$3,194), about one-half to one-third of the cost, and NT$60,000 for the second to the sixth treatment. Single women and lesbians are ineligible.
Second, pregnant women could receive seven days of paid leave to attend pregnancy checkups.
Third, there is a birth bonus, and the amount depends on the local government. If a woman gives birth in Taipei, she would receive NT$40,000.
Fourth, there is maternity and paternity leave. The mother is entitled to eight weeks of paid leave. The father has just seven days of paid leave, which he could also apply to pregnancy checkups.
Parental leave is also available for the mother or father, who are entitled to six months of parental leave at 80 percent pay.
Care subsidies are monthly, the size of which depends on who cares for the child. If a parent stays home, the subsidy is NT$5,000 per month until the child is six years old. If a nanny takes care of the child (whether in the child’s home or the nanny’s own home), or if the child is enrolled in a quasi-public daycare, the subsidy is NT$13,000. If the child is enrolled in a public daycare, the family would receive NT$5,500 per month.
The above list appears generous with sizeable increases in the birth bonus and care subsidies for nannies and quasi-public daycare centers occurring recently.
However, would this get women in Taiwan to have more babies?
President-elect William Lai (賴清德) hopes so, with additional help.
While campaigning for the presidency, he proposed to deepen and expand support for childcare, including by increasing the subsidies for public daycare centers from NT$5,500 to NT$7,000 per month.
He also called for longer daycare hours (many public daycare centers close at 4pm) to align with parents’ work hours, care services over winter and summer school vacations, raises for daycare workers and guaranteed yearly raises based on seniority, a lower teacher-student ratio, company-run daycare centers and more flexibility in parental leave.
Lai also proposed ideas to support those aged six to 22, for instance setting aside NT$10 billion to encourage students to go abroad.
His efforts would move Taiwan toward universal welfare by making childcare affordable and responsive to the needs of working parents.
One should also recognize that Lai’s fellow campaigners in the presidential election had also proposed policies that would bring Taiwan closer to many European countries on childcare support.
The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), wanted to raise the salary replacement for the six-month parental leave from 80 percent to the full salary.
He advocated that public childcare for children aged up to six months old be free, and wanted subsidies for private childcare to be raised to NT$10,000 per month.
Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) proposed doubling maternity paid leave to 14 weeks.
However, Lai’s expansive policies would still fall short of increasing the nation’s fertility rate.
Although making daycare more affordable and comprehensive would reduce worries about care for working mothers, there are still other issues to contend with, including long and inflexible working hours, low pay and high housing costs. Intriguingly, Hou proposed a NT$1 million housing subsidy for families with three or more children.
However, even if Lai tackled all these issues, one important factor is still often overlooked — the would-be working mother herself.
It is always the woman who enables the work-family balance. Despite Taiwanese women having some of the highest work participation rates in the world in their 20s at 90 percent, they have to make a tradeoff to drop out of the workforce when their children are young. Men do not make this tradeoff.
The birth of a baby not only produces a new full-time job at home, but also requires a profound juggling of identities, especially when both partners are attempting to establish their careers.
However, this responsibility and juggling more often than not falls entirely on women, whereas men tend to hold an assistant role ranging from a “god-sent” partner to an underperforming “pig partner.”
An important ingredient in understanding the low fertility issue is to understand and support the working mother’s journey to realize a thriving vision of work-family balance, which would likely require a fundamental shift in the mindset of many partners, workplaces and the broader community — factors that are harder for Lai’s incoming administration to address, but essential to supporting women who are considering having children.
Grace C. Huang is a professor at St Lawrence University in New York state and has just completed her field research in Taiwan as a US Fulbright senior scholar. She is preparing a book that would compare working mothers in Taiwan, the US and Spain, and writes a blog on the same topic at gracehuang345.com.
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