Iris's Diary

     Taiwan has reached the lowest birth rate compared to the past in recent years. On average, every woman only has about 1.05 babies. Chou and Haggerty (2021) reported that Taiwan has gone through the first time of population deduction in 2020. Until the end of 2020, Taiwan’s population had dropped by 0.18% from 2019, which gave us a warning that our government should do something to solve this problem. What are the primary reasons that cause the current situation? The scientists are not completely in agreement with the same ideas, but the following factors are the most possible assumptions.

     First, the economic situation is the main reason that causes the low birth rate. According to the statistics of netizens on the Bulletin Board System, the cost of a child from an infant to an adult, the most credible estimate is a total of 5 million dollars. And this consequence is assumed that the children are studying in public schools along the way. If they change to private schools, suspend from school, or retake exams, the cost will be even higher. Such a huge education cost puts a big financial pressure on parents, which makes young people afraid to get married. However, we are now facing a generation of low salaries and high housing prices. If one can’t bear his own financial burden, how dare he get married, not to mention having a baby. Hence, we expect that the government will proactively provide relevant benefits to alleviate economic pressure and also ask companies to raise minimum wages or raise wages through industrial transformation.

     Secondly, with the awakening of feminist consciousness, the increase of late marriage and non-marriage is also one of the reasons. As time goes by, our society has gone through a tremendous change. Based on compulsory education, women now can get higher education than men. That encourages them to pursue their dreams, and they have become more and more independent so that they are not willing to be controlled by men. Women begin to live alone. Without a stable economic foundation, they would rather not get married even if there is a suitable mate. When they want to get married, it is too late to have a baby because once women have been over thirty years old, their fertility starts to decline, which makes pregnancy more difficult. Therefore, we should realize why so many people are unwilling to get married or not married. Is it for the idea of complete non-marriage, or there is a gap between ideals and reality, or a lack of social skills to look for a mate?

     Last but not least, the concept of giving birth has changed differently from the past, including birth control and the obligation of looking after aged parents. In the early stages of Taiwan, we had promoted a schedule called family planning. It emphasized that having two babies was perfect and also supported that giving birth to a girl and boy were equally good. This intention had been affected by the environment and had gradually changed our society. From then on, we began to have a concept of birth control. And with the changes of generation, we no longer think that having children can support us for the rest of our lives because young people nowadays are unable to burden family responsibility. In other words, the parents dare not request their children to support them. Thus, having a baby is no longer important for a person’s life. People decide to keep a pet instead of a baby. Perhaps, keeping a pet is easier than taking care of children and is even cheaper than raising a child. And both of them can bring the same happiness to the people.

     To sum up, if our government wants to save Taiwan’s birth rate, they should better make efforts on the economic situation, age of marriage, and concept of giving birth; otherwise, our population structure could be in the state of imbalance.