Taiwan’s fertility rate, the average number of children born to a woman during her childbearing years, fell to a record low of 1.03 in 2009, according to statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior. Figures from the International Data Base of the U.S. Census Bureau show this to be one of the lowest rates in the world.
Sociologists worry that if this trend is not reversed, the island will soon become an aged society. In fact, some effects are already becoming apparent.
ROC Minister without Portfolio James Cherng-tay Hsueh said he foresaw the gravity of the situation as long ago as the early 1990s, when an educational reform led to a great increase in the number of high schools and colleges around the island. Due to the island’s plummeting fertility rate, he said, “there simply will not be so many students to fill all vacancies on campuses.”
From the 1940s to 1960s, the island’s population quickly doubled, growing from 6,490,000 in 1947 to 12,330,000 in 1964. After that, the population began to see slow growth due to higher average life expectancy and the tumbling fertility rate, which emerged in the 1980s, when it dropped to less than replacement level (2.1) in 1984.
Observing the nation’s statistics for births, Hsueh pointed to two peak birth periods on record, the post-war baby boom between the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the late 1970s, when these baby boomers had children of their own.
Some observers say the government’s family planning policy, which was launched in 1964 in response to the first birth peak, is in part responsible for the declining fertility rate. The policy urged families to plan pregnancies, space births and limit the number of children they had.
Yu Tzong-shian, research fellow at the Taipei-based Academia Sinica, however, attributed the fertility rate dive more to emerging equal education opportunities for women and Taiwan’s highly competitive job market.
As more opportunities become available to Taiwanese women through higher education, many are re-evaluating the importance of marriage in their lives, Yu said. “Many of them choose to work outside the home, competing with men in the workplace, and postpone the time of marriage,” he noted.
In addition, Yu said as more Taiwan-based firms left the island because of smaller profit margins caused by rising labor costs, and long-term employment opportunities became less plentiful than before, young people have had second thoughts about tying the knot and having children, given their personal financial instability.
Hsueh pointed out that while in traditional society getting married was an important way for women to become financially independent from their families of origin, contemporary women have more options.
Hsueh’s studies show that although the nation is still enjoying a “demographic dividend,” meaning that people between the ages of 15 and 64 account for more than 70 percent of the population, this situation is unlikely to last long. If the fertility rate continues to drop so quickly, the nation will soon face the challenge of an aging population.
“The immediate impact of a prevailingly elderly population will be an increased fiscal burden on public expenditures and taxpayers,” he said.
Against this backdrop, Hsueh said, “the keys to solving the problem are to make citizens more willing to have children, and also to make childbearing more affordable.” Since attitudes about having children are unlikely to change in the near future, the best thing to do is to make it more affordable. The top priority of the government, then, just as it is in other countries, would be to introduce financial incentives, he added.
Hsueh believes such incentives should include hefty baby bonuses, paid parental leave, day care subsidies, educational assistance, housing plans and programs to help young people find stable employment.
In particular, he pointed to the implementation of preferential housing loans for young married couples and partially paid parental leave for raising children, both of which only took effect recently under the current Ma Ying-jeou administration.
Hsueh emphasized that “to make the most of a population policy, timing is crucial.” With parental leave benefits taking effect in 2009, there was still some time left for the children of post-war baby boomers to reconsider having children, he said, given that this demographic group is between 30 and 35 years old, the age cohort most likely to produce children.
Yu, on the other hand, believes that ensuring basic stability in the country’s employment situation should be the government’s top priority. “The government should require that employers provide a retirement plan for their employees and cut down on the number of temporary workers,” he said.
Otherwise, as many women outperform men in the workplace, they will very likely choose to work outside the home to support the family, instead of staying home to care for their children, he added.
While they each champion different government priorities, Hsueh and Yu, agree that, given economic and cultural realities, successfully stimulating births is unfortunately a nearly impossible mission.
“Culture still plays a significant role in women’s choices about bearing children,” Hsueh pointed out.
He said the nation’s educational reforms in the 1990s allowed more students to enter college, thereby changing the life “timetable” for many women, as “it is commonly believed in Taiwanese culture that young people should not consider marriage before they finish school.”
“After spending more years pursuing a college education, their plans for marriage and having children are naturally postponed,” he noted. Later marriage then results in fewer children. “When a woman delays her marriage and first pregnancy, it is very likely she will not consider having a second child,” he explained.
Hsueh’s analysis is borne out by a recent MOI survey showing that the average age of first-time grooms and brides in 2009 was 31.6 and 28.9, respectively 1.6 and 2.5 years older than a decade ago.
In addition, Hsueh observed that Taiwan’s society is now dominated by individualism, while family values have weakened in recent times. “Take the popular idol drama genre on TV for example. Most of the shows focus solely on the romances and friendships among young adults, instead of on marriage relationships and family responsibilities,” he said.
Currently one out of four marriages in Taiwan involves a foreign spouse, with foreign brides usually less educated than local brides. Yu said as traditional values, which cast a woman’s role as homemaker and mother, tend still to be strong in families with foreign brides, the government should provide extra financial incentives to encourage these women to have children, in order to boost the island’s falling number of births.
Separately, Hsueh emphasized that the government should make sure all children are given equal educational opportunities, especially those from low-income and new immigrant families. Providing for educational equity and boosting the nation’s birth rate, he concluded, “are responsibilities a government has to shoulder.” (THN)
Write to Audrey Wang at audrey@mail.gio.gov.tw