Fri, Jan 23, 2026 page8

• Money alone cannot fix birthrate

  • By Y. Tony Yang
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  Taiwan has just set an unwanted global record. According to Ministry of the Interior household registration data, Taiwan’s crude birthrate fell to 4.62 per 1,000 people last year — reported as the lowest globally — with the total fertility rate likely to fall below 0.8. The real question is why prosperity and subsidies have not reversed the trend — and what Taiwan must redesign to make family life possible again.

  The policy response has been familiar: larger baby bonuses, expanded subsidies and renewed attention to housing affordability. These measures address real pressures. However, they assume that the constraint is primarily financial — that if families can afford children, they have them. Taiwan’s economy complicates that story. As per-capita GDP approaches the US$40,000 range, births keep falling. Wealth, by itself, is not translating into family formation.

  A useful study is the “Hsinchu exception.” Near the science park, fertility has hovered near one child per woman — higher than the national average. At first glance, that looks like a simple lesson: higher incomes help.

  However, Hsinchu shows why money alone is not enough. The local “baby bump” is sustained by a particular ecosystem: highly paid, time-intensive jobs; long commutes; intense schooling competition and in many households, an unequal division of caregiving that leaves one parent — usually the mother — carrying most of the daily load.

  That arrangement can work for some families, but it is neither scalable nor fair as a national strategy. Most Taiwanese couples need two incomes. Many women rightly want careers that do not disappear the moment they become mothers. If parenthood is experienced as a permanent “second shift,” a rational response is delay and often, opting out.

  The deeper bottleneck is time and care infrastructure. Taiwan’s work culture still rewards long hours and constant availability. When employers implicitly treat caregiving as someone else’s problem, families bear the cost — fewer children, later marriages and more people concluding that the personal tradeoffs are simply too high.

  A second bottleneck is that childbearing remains tightly linked to marriage. Only a small share of births occur outside of marriage in Taiwan compared with many Western countries. Whatever one’s values, the implication is practical: when marriage becomes less attractive or more delayed, births fall sharply. If people who want children feel they must first accept a rigid, traditional “marriage package” — including expectations from extended family and unequal domestic roles — many choose to walk away from both.

  So what would a more realistic strategy look like? It starts with treating time as infrastructure and caregiving as essential work.

  First, make it easier for parents — especially fathers — to be present. Taiwan should strengthen enforceable limits on excessive working hours, discourage after-hours “always on” expectations and expand paid parental leave in ways that change norms, not just eligibility. International experience shows that “use-it-or-lose-it” leave for fathers can shift household behavior more than optional benefits that go unused.

  Second, build childcare where families actually live and work. Subsidies matter, but availability matters more. Expand affordable childcare capacity near major job centers and transit lines, extend operating hours that match real work schedules and reduce the administrative friction that turns childcare into a second job.

  Third, modernize family policy to support the families people are already forming — and the families they would form if the rules were less rigid.

  That means strong protections and benefits for single parents and children regardless of parents’ marital status, practical support for cohabiting partners and a stigma-free safety net that prioritizes child well-being over paperwork.

  None of this is a quick fix. However, it is a more honest diagnosis.

  Taiwan does not have a “baby bonus” problem; it has a structural mismatch between modern lives and outdated expectations about work, caregiving and family.

  Taiwan became a global technology leader by building world-class infrastructure and continuously redesigning systems. The same mindset is needed at home.

  If parenthood requires giving up economic security, career opportunity or personal dignity, no subsidy is large enough. If Taiwan makes time, care and partnership easier, not just cheaper, more people are going to choose the families they already say they want.

  Y. Tony Yang is a professor at George Washington University.
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