The percentage of adults living with their parents in Taiwan and China has been declining steadily, but numbers in both countries remain higher than in the US, a leading economist said yesterday.
Cyrus Chu (朱敬一), an academic at Academia Sinica, said in a speech delivered at National Taiwan University that more than 60 percent of adults lived together with their parents in China in the 1990s, compared with 50 percent in Taiwan and 40 percent in the US.
According to the findings of a study, Chu said that the average number of people per family had dropped on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, from slightly more than four two decades ago to approximately three today.
Help wanted
In his view, Chu said that many of those who chose to live together with their parents were not necessarily doing so because of filial piety, but rather because they needed their parents' assistance in caring for young children, particularly those aged under three.
"Studies have shown that adults tend to become less willing to live with their parents when their income increases," Chu said, adding that daughters-in-law tend not to be inclined to live with their parents-in-law when their incomes are sufficient.
According to Chu, sons-in-law also tend to be less willing to live with their parents-in-law if they have a high income.
In Taiwan, Chu said, the parental preference for sons over daughters has been declining, with the percentage of those wanting boys falling from 68 percent to 46 percent according to a series of studies.
A similar trend is also seen in China, Chu said without elaborating further.
Getting older
Chu added that the average age of women giving birth for the first time was steadily increasing in both Taiwan and China.
In one of Chu's studies, 17 percent of all children born in China were born to mothers aged over 30, with the figure in Taiwan being 48 percent.
Chu's research also discovered that parents in the US do not usually pass all of their assets or property on to their children before their death because, if they did, their children may no longer choose to visit them regularly.
In the US, he said, the richer the parents, the more frequently their children come back to see them.
Chu said that in Taiwan the frequency of children visiting their parents tends to remain high or even become higher after their parents pass their assets to their children.
This phenomenon is probably related to pressure from siblings and society, he explained.
An alleged US government plan to encourage Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to form a joint venture with Intel to boost US chipmaking would place the Taiwanese foundry giant in a more disadvantageous position than proposed tariffs on imported chips, a semiconductor expert said yesterday. If TSMC forms a joint venture with its US rival, it faces the risk of technology outflow, said Liu Pei-chen (劉佩真), a researcher at the Taiwan Industry Economics Database of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research. A report by international financial services firm Baird said that Asia semiconductor supply chain talks suggest that the US government would
Starlux Airlines on Tuesday announced it is to launch new direct flights from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Ontario, California, on June 2. The carrier said it plans to deploy the new-generation Airbus A350 on the Taipei-Ontario route. The Airbus A350 features a total of 306 seats, including four in first class, 26 in business class, 36 in premium economy and 240 in economy. According to Starlux’s initial schedule, four flights would run between Taoyuan and Ontario per week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Flights are to depart from Taoyuan at 8:05pm and arrive in California at 5:05pm (local time), while return flights
Nearly 800 Indian tourists are to arrive this week on an incentive tour organized by Indian company Asian Painted Ltd, making it the largest tour group from the South Asian nation to visit since the COVID-19 pandemic. The travelers are scheduled to arrive in six batches from Sunday to Feb. 25 for five-day tours, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. The tour would take the travelers, most of whom are visiting Taiwan for the first time, to several tourist sites in Taipei and Yilan County, including tea houses in Taipei’s Maokong (貓空), Dadaocheng (大稻埕) and Ximending (西門町) areas. They would also visit
HOSPITAL VISITS: Shin Kong Mitsukoshi pledged to give the families of the four people who died NT$11m each and provide support for staff working at the time The central government would assist local governments to enhance public safety, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday as he visited people in hospital who were injured in an explosion at a department store in Taichung on Thursday. A suspected gas explosion occurred on the 12th floor of the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Zhonggang department store in Taichung at 11:33am on Thursday, killing four people and injuring 36. Of the 40 casualties, 39 were hospitalized, Ministry of Health and Welfare data showed. Three died after out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, the data showed. As of 6am yesterday, 25 of those injured had been discharged from hospital, leaving 11