The latest data from the Ministry of the Interior showed that single-person and two-people households accounted for almost half of all households nationwide last year, suggesting a growing trend of singles and elderly people living alone, and couples with double income and no children.
As of the fourth quarter of last year, of the more than 7.73 million households nationwide, about 2.28 million, or nearly 30 percent, were single-person households, the data showed.
Combined with the more than 1.52 million two-people households, the figure surpassed 3.8 million, meaning that one in every 2.03 households was single-person or two-people household.
Photo: CNA
The percentages of single-person households in Taipei, New Taipei City and Kaohsiung have all exceeded 30 percent.
New Taipei City had the most single-person households, with 470,300, followed by Kaohsiung’s 296,400 households and Taipei’s and Taichung’s more than 250,000 households each.
Tainan was the only special municipality that had fewer than 200,000 single-person households.
Two-person households in Taipei, New Taipei City and Kaohsiung all accounted for more than half of the total, while they accounted for more than 46 percent in Taoyuan, Taichung and Tainan, the data showed.
That means smaller households have become common in the six special municipalities.
The data also showed that there were about 746,600 households comprising only elderly people as of the first quarter of last year. The number rose to 803,600 in the fourth quarter.
The number of households with elderly people living alone reached 611,700 as of the fourth quarter last year, surpassing 600,000 for the first time since statistics began in 2009, the data showed.
Housing researcher Ho Shih-chang (何世昌) yesterday said that the problem of low birthrates has been aggravated by the trend of staying unmarried and childless, and has become a national security concern.
The government should offer subsidies to encourage people to get married and have children, he said.
That could counteract the trend of people staying unmarried and childless, and reduce the number of single-person households, Ho said.
Newly emerging industrial clusters have replaced traditional municipalities to offer employment and housing opportunities, and resulted in more single-person households, Colliers International Taiwan’s Landlord Representation Services director Andy Huang (黃舒衛) said.
Rising divorce rates, the trend of not getting married and women’s financial independence have impacted demographic trends and family structures, Huang said.
Labor migration due to unstable employment and the Taiwanese custom to spend retirement years at home also led to the trend of elderly people living alone, he said.
Such households result from an aging population and high divorce rate, Ho said.
While providing proper care and mental counseling for elderly people is important at the present stage, the issue of abandoned housing would ensue in 20 to 30 years when the elderly people pass away and leave their housing behind uninherited and unattended, he said.
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