About 41,000 more low-to-medium-income households have been approved for financial aid since the amended Social Assistance Act (社會救助法) took effect in July, Deputy Interior Minister Tseng Chung-ming said on Monday.
As of Oct. 28, more than 41,000 families, or about 132,000 people, had been added to the number of low-to-medium-income households that were receiving public assistance before the new measure came into being, Tseng said.
According to the Ministry of the Interior’s Web site, the number of low-income households receiving subsidies grew from 67,191 in 2001 to 114,437 as of the end of the second quarter this year.
The amended law, which was passed by the Legislative Yuan in December last year and took effect on July 1 this year, revised the income threshold for low-to-medium income families downward, making more people eligible for subsidies.
The thresholds vary in each city and municipality according to the administrative region’s cost of living and current land value.
The social assistance section under the Taipei City Government said that 19,529 households had been added to the low-income household aid program since July.
It did not provide figures for the number of middle-income households that became eligible for aid.
The city classifies applicants into four categories based on their monthly income and family size. Financial aid ranges from NT$1,400 (US$46.50) to NT$14,152 per person per month, according to the Department of Social Welfare’s Web site.
In Taipei, a low-income household is defined as one where the average monthly income per member is less than NT$14,794, average personal property is below NT$150,000 and total real estate holdings are worth less than NT$5.5 million.
For a medium-income family in Taipei, average income and personal property per household member should not exceed NT$18,755 a month and NT$150,000 respectively, and real estate holdings should not exceed NT$6.5 million.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS