A lack of incentives for younger people to marry as well as high costs for housing, elderly care and child-rearing are the main causes for Taiwan’s declining birthrate, Academia Sinica associate researcher Cheng Yen-hsin (鄭雁馨) said on Friday.
Cheng made the remarks in reaction to the Ministry of the Interior earlier in the day publishing data on childbirths in the nation.
Last year, 165,249 babies were born, a new low in more than a decade, the data showed.
Cheng said that in 2019, the average marrying age in Taiwan was 32.6 for men and 30.4 for women, and has since likely increased.
Birth cohorts in Taiwan are getting smaller, she said, adding that there are for example about 368,000 people in the nation who were born in 1984, but only 320,000 born in 1991.
Despite research to the contrary, many people are worried that having children at a later age might increase the mother’s and the child’s health risks, Cheng said.
“Many believe that a woman’s ‘golden age’ for having children is before 35,” Cheng said. “That mindset makes it difficult for people to find a partner.”
Men, especially those older than 35, tend to search for partners who are at least five years younger, she said.
Due to low wages, high real-estate prices, long work hours, a child-unfriendly culture in many companies and high costs for raising a child, many Taiwanese do not want to marry and have children, Cheng said.
Separately, Peng Wan-ru Foundation deputy director-general Wang Chao-ching (王兆慶) said that benefits for older people, a growing demographic in Taiwan, would inevitably take up funding that could be used for other purposes.
The government should implement incentives for young people to marry and have children, as a further decline of the birthrate would deprive society of its source of wealth and lead to its collapse, he said.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare in a report based on 2018 data showed that families with a monthly income of NT$50,497, the average in Taiwan, spend about 24.1 percent of their income on children-related expenses.
One woman, surnamed Chen (陳), said in response to media queries that she does not want to have children, due to the high costs.
Chen said that while wages and government subsidies are flat, child-related costs increase, making “raising children a luxury few can afford.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,