More than 600,000 elderly people live alone — a new high, 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 households composed of only people aged 65 or older surpassed 800,000 for the first time at 803,600, compared with 774,100 in the third quarter of the previous year.
About 611,800 of these households had elderly people living alone, accounting for about 76 percent.
Photo: Taipei Times
The number of households with two elderly people was 174,800, or 21.75 percent, while those with three elderly people or more totaled about 17,000 units, or 2.12 percent,the data showed.
About 23.87 percent of housing units had elderly people who had to care for another elderly person.
As the demand for retirement homes is much greater than their supply in Taiwan, elderly people tend to live alone, real-estate expert Ho Shih-chang (何世昌) said.
Elderly people living alone are targeted by scammers, while old houses aged 30 or older might be required to be reconstructed, he said.
As Taiwan has become a super-aged society this year, a shortage of healthcare workers poses a greater risk than the overall labor shortage, Colliers International Taiwan’s Landlord Representation Services director Andy Huang (黃舒衛) said.
Housing policies must address such problems by proposing realistic and feasible long-term care programs and schemes to provide life services for elderly people, he said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS