A survey of young Taiwanese showed that only 36.5 percent of men and 19.6 percent of women believe marriage is important, a trend that academics say is key to the nation’s low birthrate.
Yang Wen-shan (楊文山), an adjunct research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, yesterday announced the 12th round of results from a longitudinal survey of attitudes among young Taiwanese toward markers of adulthood.
While few of the respondents, who were aged 28 to 32 when surveyed in 2017, found marriage to be important, 95.8 percent believed that being responsible for oneself should take precedence, data showed.
Economic independence came in second among about 85 percent of men and women, the survey showed.
The biggest problem is that young people do not have stable accommodation, Yang said.
Difficulty in buying a house is the biggest factor keeping young couples from having children, he said.
For parents who already have one child, lack of sufficient childcare restricts them from having another, he added.
The low birthrate is closely linked to the marriage rate, not the fertility of married couples, institute associate research fellow Alice Cheng (鄭雁馨) said.
The decline in the fertility rate was mainly driven by a drop in the marriage rate among eligible women in the post-industrial period, especially those aged 20 to 29, she said.
Traditional values are to thank for the growing disinterest in marriage, Cheng said.
Confucian culture exalts continuation of the family line as the basis of filial practice, meaning that marriage is primarily considered in the context of child rearing, she said.
However, people tend to prefer a spouse close to their own age, meaning that as people hold off getting married until later in life for education or work, it becomes harder to have kids and therefore elicits greater opposition from their parents, Cheng said.
The diminishing size of each generation also adds to the problem, she added.
There are fewer young women, yet young and older men both hope to find a young wife, leading to a gender imbalance, Cheng said.
Outdated medical information compounds the problem, she said.
People keep repeating the myth that the prime age to bear children is 28 and 34 is already old, but in reality, many women have healthy children at 35, she said, criticizing obstetricians for failing to accurately convey the risks of late childbirth.
Cheng also urged more balanced discussion of the issue, as a man’s age has also been shown to affect the health of their infant.
If people do not change their traditional views of what a “normal” family looks like and government policy fails to address the right issues, a plummeting birthrate is inevitable, she added.
The heads of three major US banks on Wednesday pledged that they would withdraw from the Chinese market if Washington imposed sanctions on Beijing in response to an invasion of Taiwan. JP Morgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of America chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser told lawmakers at a hearing of the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services in Washington that the three banks would follow the guidance of the US government to exit China if necessary. The three bankers made the pledge after US Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer asked the three if they
HIGH STAKES: An attack on Taiwan could prompt a joint response from the US and Japan, and trigger a global conflict that could bring down the CCP, Liu Tai-ying said The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would not be able to launch an invasion of Taiwan for at least another 10 years, Taiwan Research Institute founder Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英) said on Friday. To occupy Taiwan, China needs to transport at least 300,000 to 400,000 troops across the Taiwan Strait during battle, but it would lack the ability to do so for at least another decade, said Liu, a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) treasurer and a close aide to former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). The challenges that China would face during an attempted invasion of Taiwan would be even greater than those
CHINA CRITIC: Prime ministerial candidate Giorgia Meloni, the front-runner in today’s election, said that she would not renew a Belt and Road Initiative deal with Beijing Italian lawmaker Giorgia Meloni, the front-runner to become the country’s next prime minister, is expected to reverse course on Italy’s support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative and strengthen ties with Taiwan if a coalition headed by her party wins the country’s general election today. “Without any doubt, if there is a center-right government, it is sure that Taiwan will be an essential concern for Italy,” Meloni told the Central News Agency in an interview. Italians are to vote in a snap election triggered by the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi following a failed attempt to get his coalition partners
HAWAII MODEL: While Hawaii held a referendum on becoming the 50th US state, Taiwan has never applied to join the People’s Republic of China, Miles Yu said China comparing Taiwanese independence to Hawaii seeking independence from the US is illogical, as Taiwan has never applied to be a part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hudson Institute senior fellow Miles Yu (余茂春) said over the weekend. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), who is in New York for the UN General Assembly, has given multiple talks asserting Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan. In a speech to the Asia Society on Thursday, Wang likened Taiwan to Hawaii. “Just as the US would not allow Hawaii to break away,” Beijing “reserves the right” to seek unification, Wang told the gathering. The
RSS