The life expectancy in Taiwan last year was 80.77 years — up from 80.23 a year earlier — with cancer the top cause of death for the 43rd consecutive year, the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement yesterday.
Cancer deaths totaled 54,032 last year, or 26.83 percent of all deaths, the ministry said, citing Ministry of Health and Welfare data.
Had it not been for malignant tumors, life expectancy — the average number of years a newborn is expected to live — would have been 84.36 years, or 3.59 years longer, the statement said.
Graphic courtesy of the Ministry of the Interior
Cancer’s effect on life expectancy ebbed last year compared with 2014, when malignant tumors reduced the figure by 4.04 years, suggesting a reduction in the nation’s cancer prevalence, it said.
The third-biggest cause of death in Taiwan last year was pneumonia, whose negative impact on health increased in terms of the number of deaths and life expectancy reduction, it said.
The loss of lifespan stemming from pneumonia was 1.05 years last year, up from 0.94 years in 2023, it said.
The unexplained rise in pneumonia deaths is of concern to the government, it said.
In other news, the number of people living alone last year increased to 3.574 million, or 37.67 percent of those with household registration, interior ministry data showed.
The nation’s population was 23.6 million in 2019, but had fallen to 23.4 million last year, the interior ministry said.
However, the number of households has grown, largely driven by a decline in child-rearing families, it said.
Last year, 5.49 million households — or 59 percent of registered households — consisted of people who lived alone or couples without children, it said.
The number of single-person households or couples without children has steadily increased over the past decade, it added.
Meanwhile, the number of multi-generational households decreased last year, with trigenerational families of five or more members falling to 985,000, or less than 10.3 percent, the interior ministry said.
Government records from Keelung showed that 41.61 percent of the city’s registered households last year had a single member, the highest rate among the nation’s 22 local administrations, it said.
Taitung and Taipei were not far behind, with both reporting that single-person households accounted for more than 40 percent of the total, it said.
Population density decreased in Taiwan last year in a sign of the nation’s demographic decline, it said.
Population density fell from a height of 652 people per square kilometer in 2019 to 644 people per square kilometer last year, corresponding with the nation’s shrinking population, the interior ministry said.
Last year, Taipei was the most densely populated local administration in the nation, with 8,988 people per square kilometer, followed by 4,371 people per square kilometer in Hsinchu City and 4,343 people per square kilometer in Chiayi City, it said.
Last year’s least densely populated administrative regions were Nantou County with 114 people per square kilometer, Hualien County with 67 people per square kilometer and Taitung County with 59 people per square kilometer, it said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS