The number of households composed of only people aged 65 or older in the north is now almost double that of the south, the latest data from the Ministry of the Interior’s Real Estate Information Platform showed.
In the fourth quarter of last year, the number of elderly-only households in Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan was 370,600, compared to just 187,600 across Tainan and Kaohsiung.
There are therefore 97.55 percent more elderly households in the north compared to the south, and when encompassing Taichung, the north still has 35.55 percent more than the southern and central municipalities.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
Many young Taiwanese from the south migrate northward for job opportunities, which in theory should leave many households in the south with only elderly residents, real-estate experts said.
However, it is speculated that many of those who rent property in the north keep their household registration in the south, meaning they may not be counted in the statistics, they said.
Meanwhile, the higher proportion of elderly living in the north may be due to children emigrating or living separately after marriage, they added.
Those households in the north are comprised not only of the local elderly, but are also the result of industrialization and urbanization, as those who formerly migrated north for work are now aging, Colliers International Taiwan director Huang Shu-wei (黃舒衛) said.
They may then choose to remain in the north for retirement, which challenges the long-held assumption that most people return to their hometowns in old age, he added.
Of the 370,600 households of only elderly people in the north, about 288,800, or 77.93 percent, were single-occupant elderly households, data show.
In recent years, the government has been promoting house-for-pension schemes and reverse mortgages, which allow senior homeowners to mortgage their house in exchange for payments to cover their daily needs while still maintaining property rights, Xin Chuan Real Estate Think Tank chief executive officer Ho Shih-chang (何世昌) said.
Therefore, the number of elderly leveraging property ownership for pension benefits has increased, with the scheme a significant contributor to the large number of elderly households in the north, he added.
Single-resident elderly households are a common occurrence and a result of the rural-urban divide, Sinyi Realty research center manager Tseng Ching-te (曾敬德) said.
Of the elderly people who live alone in the north, many likely have children who also live in the north and can therefore access care and emotional support, he said.
In contrast, for those who stay in the south, their children may have had their own families living in the north and would therefore be more isolated and have limited access to care, he said.
Taiwan should look to Japan, which is battling its own aging population crisis, to find potential solutions to the gap in caregiving, he added.
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