The number of newborns is falling each year and the population structure is being flipped on its head, yet we are still mired in debate over what to do and how much money to spend.
The problem is simple. It is not that young people do not want children, but that they are struggling with life, as it is too much to dare think of the future.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) raised a proposal for the state to cover National Health Insurance premiums for children aged six and younger.
Supporters said it would ease the financial burden on families while critics worry about fiscal pressure. Both have a point. Encouraging people to have children is a major issue for public policy, but even the best measures must be fiscally sustainable, and there is no single subsidy that could serve as a silver bullet.
Covering health insurance premiums might reduce pressure for middle to high-income families who are not already covered, but if general conditions remain unchanged, willingness to have children would still be unlikely to increase.
Declining birthrates are not just about a subsidy or a lack thereof; what shapes decisionmaking for would-be families is far more structural.
Sky-high housing prices are perhaps the biggest barrier. Many young people are struggling just to secure a stable life, let alone plan for children.
Wage growth also remains limited while the cost of living keeps rising; workplace cultures demand long hours and offer low flexibility; and childcare responsibilities still largely fall on women.
The pressures of insufficient childcare resources, education costs and a limited social safety net all add up. It is not necessarily that young people do not want to be parents, but that they fear that having children would mean they would no longer be able to support themselves.
Therefore, any policy that might reduce the burden of raising children is worth careful consideration. Subsidizing health insurance, expanding childcare support, offering tax relief and giving back time to parents are ways to reduce pressure on families.
In this light, the Taipei City Government’s pilot program to reduce working hours for parents is an example of offering hours instead of money. For many families, their scarcest resource is not subsidies, but time for children. Without changing the pace of life and overall caregiving burdens, subsidizing expenses alone would not ease the pressure parents are under.
If this measure remains a pilot program in a single city, its impact would remain limited. Low birthrates are a nationwide issue that cannot be solved by competing for local government finances.
The solution is for the central government to coordinate and integrate systems so that support for families and childrearing becomes a uniform national policy, not something determined by household registration, city of residence or the state of the local government’s finances. Otherwise, the accessibility of having children ends up being dependent on where one lives — a clear systematic inequity.
Deeper change requires institutional reform and a shift in thinking. Education, family values and ideas around childcare responsibilities should be reimagined. In the workplace, reasonable incomes and stable career progression opportunities must be on offer. As for housing policy, first-time buyers must be given a reason to be hopeful, not saddled with a lifetime of mortgage debt and sent on their way.
Only when life feels secure could couples look forward to marriage and the prospect of having children seem possible. No single subsidy could influence people’s decisions to start a family. Making life predictable, affordable and sustainable could.
If the government wants to reverse the demographic trajectory, it must put forward long-term and stable institutional policies, not just piecemeal subsidies and short-lived slogans. Providing extra support for families with children is an entirely reasonable form of differential treatment, and a necessary investment in our nation’s population structure.
The key to good policy is not just in the price tag, but whether it is sustainable, universal and capable of changing material living conditions. The likely outcome of a fragmented policy in response to the nation’s crisis is clear: continued population decline, accelerated societal aging, labor shortages and diminished national competitiveness. The impact then would not just be on families, but on society and the economy as a whole.
The birthrate problem is not a single policy issue. It is a question of whether people feel hope and have the capacity to think about a future. If we want to encourage young people to have children, they must be able to live first. If we want to achieve population growth, they must be able to do so with hope. Subsidies could relieve some of the pressure, but only systemic change could shape our future.
Chen Ching-yun is a former director of the Legislative Yuan’s Bureau of Legal Affairs.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
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