Taiwan takes steps to make more babies

Posted by on Wednesday, January 12, 2011 · 5 Comments 

Stuck with the lowest birth rate in the world and with 2010 the worst year on record for births, Taiwan’s government is trying hard to get people to make babies. As well as offering stipends Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou has ordered “national security-level” countermeasures to boost the birth rate.

How do you think the dearth of births can be remedied? Leave a comment below

babies Taiwan takes steps to make more babies (Next Media Animation TV)

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  • Jennifer

    A huge part of the problem lies in how corporations treat women. If a women gets pregnant they are do not receive the benefits that women in other countries do. If there was more pregnancy leave – and more work life balance – women would be more willing to have kids. Accusing women of being selfish for not wanting kids moves the discussion no where – all it does is put the blame on the wrong people and make women even more resentful they have to work twice as hard as men to get the same recognition. Start working on that problem, and things will look up.

  • Dan

    I’ll fix the problem for you! just get me a hotel room and send all your weathergirls over.

  • St0815

    On a more practical note: I think one of the problems for young families in Taiwan, are the costs of housing. The government should address the housing bubble and make sure living space becomes affordable again.

    Also – the work/life balance needs to be addressed. Spending all your time in the office means you’ll spend none of it with your family. Longer vacations and shorter working days are needed. Weekends belong to the family not the employer.

    Some people want to have children earlier – make sure that universities provide facilities for child care, make sure that there are dorms available for young families.

    In order to marry you need to have a relationship first – if children spend all their time in school or preparing for school, they don’t have time to form relationships. There needs to be time for young people in which they can get to know each other.

  • St0815

    I don’t think immigration could solve Taiwan’s demographic problem. Taiwan needs qualified people who can contribute to it’s economy. There is no easily tapped supply of these people. Sure it might be beneficial to have a sort of green card program to attract engineers from India, but that’s just a drop on a hot stone. There is a readily available supply of people who are uneducated and illiterate and don’t speak Mandarin, but that would contribute nothing to Taiwan’s economy.

    Even if you could somehow address Taiwan’s lack of young people, you’d still be left with the same structural issues – i.e. you would solve the problem in the short term, but wouldn’t prevent it from occurring again a decade later.

    Furthermore: nobody enjoys becoming a minority in their own country, it would be hard to avoid ethnic conflicts.

    So I think it’s unavoidable that Taiwan addresses their own population problem, just as countries having a too high birth rate need to address theirs.

  • WanKit

    Too many people already. Drop the xenophobia and open the immigration floodgates. There are people all over who would love to live in Taiwan.