High-income households showed a stronger inclination to own cars and read books, magazines or newspapers, a Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) survey showed.
The survey, which examined household income and expenditure, offered a snapshot of how Taiwanese lifestyles related to income, spending and savings last year.
Mobile phones and computers were owned by 97.5 percent and 67 percent of households respectively, while about 99 percent used the Internet, reflecting the growing digitalization of daily life, the DGBAS said.
Photo: CNA
Color televisions — found in 97.7 percent of homes — are standard equipment in contemporary Taiwanese households. However, from a longer historical view, although the penetration rate of color TV had been more than 99 percent since 1991, it has been slowly dropping over the past decade, reaching a record low below 99 percent in 2018 and continued with the downward trend last year, it said.
Cable TV penetration, which had stayed above 70 percent for more than 20 years, fell to a new low of 67.6 percent, the survey showed.
Meanwhile, the share of households using video-on-demand (VOD) services such as Chunghwa Telecom Co’s Multimedia-On-Demand platform rose steadily from 3.9 percent in 2008 to 15.1 percent last year, it showed.
Across income levels, ownership rates of basic household appliances such as televisions, washing machines and air-conditioners showed little variation, as these have become standard fixtures in nearly all homes, the DGBAS said.
However, the penetration rates of cars, computers, as well as books and magazines, were significantly higher among high-income households, the survey showed.
High-income households had car and computer ownership rates of 85.3 percent and 92.5 percent respectively, significantly higher than the overall averages of 60.6 percent and 67 percent, it showed.
Their readership rates for books or magazines was 5.2 percent — 3.1 percentage points higher than the average of 2.1 percent — while newspaper readership stood at 5.9 percent, 0.6 points higher than the overall rate, the data showed.
The findings suggest that high-income families are more inclined to keep up with current events and acquire new knowledge through print media such as books, magazines and newspapers.
A DGBAS official speaking on condition of anonymity said ownership and usage rates for different types of home equipment are shaped by socioeconomic conditions and evolving social trends.
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