The number of girls running away from home was three times that of boys, a survey by the Child Welfare League Foundation showed.
The foundation said that its survey of 251 children and teenagers who ran away from home found that the number of female runaways was 3.1 times that of their male counterparts.
A larger number of the runaways came from single-parent families, it said.
Nearly 60 percent of young people who run away from home do it again after the first time, it found.
A large number of teenagers leave home because of problems with their girlfriends or boyfriends, foundation executive director Chen Li-ju (陳麗如) said, adding that this is related to the gap between parents and children on dealing with social relationships.
More than 50 percent of runaways seek shelter at the homes of their boyfriends or girlfriends, and those who take them in could even be friends they had just met on the Internet, Chen said.
The foundation urged parents to step up communication and improve their relationship with their children to prevent them from running away.
Yang Li-jung (楊俐容), an expert on parent-child issues, said the fact that girl runaways far outnumber boys might be attributed to the earlier onset of puberty, parents’ stricter rules on dating and easier access to assistance from others outside of their families.
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