The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is mulling whether to provide a subsidy of between NT$3,000 and NT$5,000 a month to children aged zero to two, with children from high-income families excluded from the program.
Chang Hsiu-yuan (張秀鴛), director of the ministry’s Child Welfare Bureau, said the proposed plan has been sent to the Council for Economic Planning and Development for deliberation.
The ministry will also report to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) on the project, Chang said.
She said the initial plan calls for distributing subsidies for children in that age group among families whose annual household income falls below NT$1.5 million (US$51,200), whose real estate assets do not exceed NT$6.5 million and whose cash assets do not exceed NT$150,000.
If the families’ annual income falls below NT$600,000, they would get NT$5,000 per month for the first child and NT$5,000 for the second child, while families whose annual income falls between NT$600,000 and NT$1.1 million would receive NT$4,000 for their first child and NT$5,000 for the second. Families whose income falls between NT$1.1 million and NT$1.5 million would get NT$3,000 for the first child, NT$4,000 for the second and NT$5,000 for a third.
Chang estimated that the government would need NT$8.3 billion to subsidize the program, based on an estimate of 190,000 new births every year. She added that about 80,000 people would benefit from the subsidies.
The ministry’s plan comes amid Ma’s calls for efforts to boost the nation’s declining birthrate as a matter of “national security.”
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