New Party legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) yesterday urged the government to amend the Maint-enance Law to make it obligatory for children to support parents "who consider themselves to be in financial difficulty" once the latter reach the age of 65.
Asked by the Taipei Times whether the requirement would be subject to any form of means test, Lai said: "This amendment is aimed at those parents who consider themselves in financial difficulty. There is no defined financial standard."
Lai said he believed that such a measure would not only "ensure the continuity of the traditional Chinese virtue of filial piety, but would also help to ease pressure on public coffers."
The amendment was proposed by Lai, along with fellow legislators Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) of the DPP and Kuo Su-chun (郭素春) of the KMT, at a press conference yesterday.
The UN defines a society as an aging one if its elderly population constitutes 6.5 percent or more of the total population.
By the end of the June this year, the elderly population of Taiwan had already surpassed 7 percent. Both the UN and Taiwan's government define persons over the age of 65 as elderly.
The three legislators said that Taiwan should adopt Singapore's parental care legislation, which requires the children of senior citizens to support their parents financially, as a model to improve care of the elderly in Taiwan.
"It's rather pathetic to have to force people to support their parents," Tsai said.
According to a survey conducted last year by the Ministry of the Interior, 6.27 percent of Taiwan's elderly, approximately 120,000 people, lived alone. About 5.2 percent, approximately 100,000 people, live in homes for the elderly.
According to the legislators, the average senior citizen has only NT$9,414 to spend on basic living expenses each month, approximately NT$7,000 less than the average working age person. They said more than 730,000 elderly people live on less than NT$6,000 per month.
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