Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday.
The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime.
However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people.
Photo: Tsai Shu-yuan, Taipei Times
Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six, but hold above five per 1,000 people last year.
In contrast, Taiwan’s crude birthrate plummeted from 5.76 per 1,000 people in 2024 to 4.62 last year, and its total fertility rate is likely to fall below 0.8.
Ministry data showed that only 107,812 babies were born in Taiwan last year, or a crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people.
That was 27,044 babies fewer than 2024, when there were 134,856 newborns and a crude birthrate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, and was a record low since the ministry began compiling statistics.
The number of newborns has declined for 10 consecutive years, from 208,440 in 2016 to 193,844 in 2017; 181,601 in 2018; 177,767 in 2019; 165,249 in 2020; 153,820 in 2021; 138,986 in 2022; 135,571 in 2023; 134,856 in 2024; and 107,812 last year, ministry data showed.
Taiwan has officially become a “super-aged society” under UN criteria, which defines it as one in which people aged 65 or older make up at least 20 percent of the population.
Countries where people aged 65 or older make up 14 percent or more of the population are defined as “aged” societies, while those with 7 percent or more are “aging” societies.
As of the end of last month, Taiwan’s population aged 65 or` older totaled 4,673,155, or 20.06 percent of the total population, the ministry said.
The total population was 23,299,132 as of the end of last month, down 101,088 from the same period in 2024, the second consecutive year of population decline, the data showed.
There were 200,268 deaths last month, 1,839 fewer than in December 2024, with a crude death rate of 8.58 per 1,000 people, it showed.
As of the end of last year, people aged 14 or younger totaled 2,681,890, or 11.51 percent of the population, while people aged 15 to 64 reached 15,944,087, or 68.43 percent, the figures showed.
As for marriages, 104,376 couples tied the knot last year, down 18,685 from 2024, the ministry said, adding that 52,101 couples divorced last year, 1,368 fewer than a year earlier.
Minister of Health and Welfare Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said that half a year ago, the ministry already expected Taiwan would become a “super-aged society.”
In response to the rapidly aging population, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has plans in four key areas — health promotion, decentralized care, reform of the benefits system and integration of technology — adjusting medical and care systems to meet the challenges associated with a “super-aged society,” he said.
Additional reporting by Chiu Chih-jou
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS