About 4.3 percent of women aged 15 to 64, or 366,000 people, live alone, up from 2.9 percent in 2015 and 2.6 percent in 2011, a Ministry of Health and Welfare study found.
Divorced or separated women accounted for the highest percentage — 17.3 percent of divorcees and separated women live alone, while 11.6 percent of widows do, the data released on Thursday showed.
According to a 2017 survey, there are about 3.8 percent more women living alone who are 65 or older than the percentage of men in the same age group.
Women 35 or younger are more likely than those in other age groups to live alone or with friends, classmates or coworkers as opposed to with family, the Social and Family Affairs Administration said.
Women aged 35 to 44 are most likely to live with family at 96.1 percent, but the figure drops again as age increases, as 6.6 percent of those aged 55 to 64 live alone, it said.
Commenting on the data, Wu Wei-ting (伍維婷), assistant professor at the Shih Hsin University Graduate Institute for Gender Studies, said other than women having a slightly longer life expectancy, the increase in the percentage of women living alone could also be attributed to the higher divorce rate, which has hovered around 2.3 couples per 1,000 people over the past few years.
Of these divorcees, 60 percent are women 44 or older who decide to divorce after their children entered junior-high or high school, she said.
Considering only about half as many women as men choose to remarry, the number of women living alone is bound to increase, she added.
The phenomenon could also be attributable to the increasing tendency for women to not marry at all, Wu said.
As of the end of the last year, the percentage of unmarried women aged 40 to 64 was 13 percent, Ministry of the Interior data showed.
In a society that still has not achieved gender equality, women receive less benefit from being married than men, Wu said, adding that even a working wife spends three times as long on housework as her husband.
As the government considers how to provide long-term care for an aging population, it should take into account the gender discrepancy among those who live alone, Wu said.
“As the government creates long-term care facilities, it can expect that more women than men will be living alone,” she said. “Certain infrastructure in elderly daycare centers and apartments should be adjusted, such as the number of public toilets, while women also tend to care more about privacy than men.”
Although more women are living alone, they are more likely than men to seek social connection, Academia Sinica Institute of Sociology assistant researcher Alice Cheng (鄭雁馨) said.
Increasing numbers of men are also choosing not to marry, which could soon lead to unmarried people constituting one-quarter of the entire eligible population, Cheng said, urging the government to think of ways to support people who are single and live alone.
A 45-year-old woman who plans not to marry or find a partner said that she would prefer to live a carefree life and plans to find other single women to live with in her old age, Cheng said.
However, she said that she worries most about being unable to find someone to serve as her medical power of attorney and her companions dying before her, leaving her to die alone, Cheng added.
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
A magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 2:23pm today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was 5.4 kilometers northeast of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 34.9 km, according to the CWA. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was the highest in Hualien County, where it measured 2 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 1 in Yilan county, Taichung, Nantou County, Changhua County and Yunlin County, the CWA said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by
‘WORSE THAN COMMUNISTS’: President William Lai has cracked down on his political enemies and has attempted to exterminate all opposition forces, the chairman said The legislature would motion for a presidential recall after May 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday at a protest themed “against green communists and dictatorship” in Taipei. Taiwan is supposed to be a peaceful homeland where people are united, but President William Lai (賴清德) has been polarizing and tearing apart society since his inauguration, Chu said. Lai must show his commitment to his job, otherwise a referendum could be initiated to recall him, he said. Democracy means the rule of the people, not the rule of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but Lai has failed to fulfill his
RSS