Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) last week told residents to avoid wearing scary Halloween costumes on the MRT so as not to alarm other passengers. Well, I thought, so much for my plan to visit Taipei dressed as the National Development Council’s (NDC) biennial population report “Population Projections for the Republic of China (Taiwan): 2024-2070,” which came out last week.
Terms like “low birth rate” and “demographic decline” do not cut it — the report is nothing short of a demographic disaster. Yet, in Taiwan, as in other countries, it is solvable. It simply requires a change in mindset.
As it stands, at the end of 2022 there were only around 900,000 children between the ages of zero to four compared to around 2.2 million people aged between 40 and 44.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
According to data from the Ministry of the Interior’s Department of Household Registration, the total fertility rate for women aged between 15-49 was 0.865 percent last year. The replacement rate is generally considered to be 2.1.
The NDC’s report estimates that by 2028, the workforce will be short by around 350,000 people, with that number expected to rise to 480,000 by 2030.
UH-OH NUMBERS
Photo courtesy of the Kaohsiung Education Bureau
The NDC’s report gave low, medium and high estimates for Taiwan’s population in 2070, with the medium projection assuming a fertility rate of 1.0, higher than their estimate of it being only 0.865 last year. Using their low estimate of a rate of 0.8 they project the population plunging to 14.37 million, a staggering 40 percent drop compared to Taiwan’s peak population in 2019 at 23.6 million.
These numbers are wrong of course. They do not include the number of foreigners present in Taiwan, which will soon top a million, with so-called “migrant workers” alone having passed 800,000 last month. If foreign-born spouses are counted, the number of foreign-born people in Taiwan is probably closer to 1.5 million.
If we continue on the path we are on much of the culture will disappear with no one to maintain, sustain and carry on traditions — a pattern that is already playing out. With less people to sustain our current and future society and economy, much will disappear, be forced into drastic changes or be automated.
THE CLASH BETWEEN BIOLOGY, MORALITY AND CAPITALISM
The causes of the demographic disaster are rooted in conflicts between human biology, human morality and free-market capitalism. Considering everything stacked up against having children today it is something of a triumph of human biology that any children are being born at all.
Free-market capitalism has transformed human societies and produced enormous wealth and comfort — for our species at least.
While it is very possible that a new economic model is on the horizon with the exponential rise of technology and a lot less people, for now capitalism remains the most efficient and practical system for most of the economy.
The key word there is “most.” Capitalism is a system, and like any system does not care one way or another about us. It is great for producing widgets efficiently and shipping them around the world, but it does not care if the widget is toxic to humans or not, so limits and regulations on how capitalism works have been introduced.
Similarly, for human moral reasons, we have rendered children economically costly. While businesses can and do invest in projects that will pay off in the long term, slavery, child labor or naming our children after brands and tattooing their logos on them like race cars are all not acceptable to modern humans.
Increasingly, children are becoming like very expensive pets for the wealthy. Fewer and fewer people have the money, the time or ability to procreate, with a massive dropoff in sperm counts caused by pollution and junk food. With property and rental prices continuing to spike, finding space in increasingly small homes to fit even these pint-sized people is getting harder.
THE CURRENT PRIORITIES DO NOT MAKE SENSE
So far most countries have tried to deal with this issue through a hodge-podge of incentives, tax breaks, subsidies and tinkering with the laws to make it easier to accommodate children. At best these have only served to slow the decline.
What is surprising is the lack of public debate on this issue. If society really wants to reverse this trend, it likely can if the will is there.
There are cases to be made that declining populations are a good thing. It is likely that less people will use less resources and put less strain on the planet, while others may put hopes in a society transformed by technology leading to a singularity whereby no one needs to work and traditional capitalism is no longer necessary, so worrying about a future lack of consumers is not necessary. Most people alive today can remember a time without Internet access, it is certain that at a similar point in the future things will be even more radically different.
Should a consensus form that increasing the birth rate is a societal benefit and will remain an economic bonus in the long term, then it should be prioritized as such. It needs to be thought of in terms of percentage of GDP assigned to it, like we do with defense, health and education.
Most societies have long since come to the consensus that in spite of the expense, the long-term benefits to society and the economy of educating children is a net benefit. This year the national budget for education, culture and technology was the second largest entry at NT$561.2 billion (US$17.5 billion), or 19.5 percent of the entire budget.
When local government spending and parent’s outlays are included, it is likely that Taiwan is spending at least 4 percent of GDP on education. In their report to the legislature, it was stated that the NDC is working to optimize relevant programs, but would require an estimated budget of NT$50 billion (US$1.56 billion) to be effective.
Taiwan is spending less than 10 percent the amount on the existence of children as it as it spends to educate them, never mind the amount spent on their healthcare, safety and the military to keep them safe from invasion. This does not make sense.
COMING TO A CONSENSUS
If society comes to the consensus that this must be a priority and worth the added costs, thought will be needed to consider how to implement this. As a free society, of course, nothing should be compelled, but it should be seamlessly easy for parents to birth and raise children if they want to — and given the opportunity many would.
Debates will need to take place as to whether cash payments equal to a decent salary and the costs of caring for the children should be made, or if everything that the parents need is made free and laws changed to ensure adequate time is available for at least one parent to care for a child or children. The advantage of the first is simplicity and flexibility, but it does open the possibility of people having children for the money rather than out of love.
The second option is enormously complex and would require considerable bureaucracy to manage, increasing costs and reducing the time parents have due to endlessly filling out paperwork. Perhaps a combination of the two may be the way to go, but whatever method of implementation is agreed upon ideally would be determined through rigorous public debate, input from experts and women.
That is assuming society does decide to make this a priority, which so far it has not.
This alone would likely improve the situation significantly, but it would not likely be enough to completely turn things around. Other ideas, such as encouraging immigration and offering birth citizenship that can be extended to parents similar to way it is done in the US would help.
Donovan’s Deep Dives is a regular column by Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) who writes in-depth analysis on everything about Taiwan’s political scene and geopolitics. Donovan is also the central Taiwan correspondent at ICRT FM100 Radio News, co-publisher of Compass Magazine, co-founder Taiwan Report (report.tw) and former chair of the Taichung American Chamber of Commerce. Follow him on X: @donovan_smith.
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