Despite government efforts, Taiwan’s birth rate has continued to fall since crossing the “lowest-low fertility rate” of 1.3 in 2003. At a press event held by Business Today, experts weighed in on this demographic crisis and gave insight to what might be driving it.
When effects of Taiwan population decline will visually effect Taiwan GDP through labour participation?
It seems this new generation just entering market (24 to 27 year old gratitudes) , so they are not important participants yet for next 10 years.
That age range- 25 to 35 years old- is pretty well considered one of the most productive groups in society. To say they won’t contribute until they are 35+ seems a little dubious.
By relative terms vs older working generation. When juniour enter working population is not that crucial cause you still have massive older generation working.
But once you have massive retirements by older generations which can not be replace by younger population, than GDP starts shrinking (at least on opportunity bases).
Its a good point. Taiwan should be facing a workplace crisis right about now as birth rate dropped in half in about 20 years if I remember correctly.
This may account for the appalling stone faced and mute service of many younger people here these days.
In manufacturing in Taiwan everyone is either old or a migrant worker from SEA. The bottom is going to drop out of SME manufacturing in Taiwan in five-ten years because the people just aren’t there.
I heard that rates of some SMEs are equivalent to rates from European manufacturers these days.
I haven’t found that yet with my long time suppliers vs US manufacturers but the gap is closing.
If I were Taiwanese or any sort of free agent in the labour market, why on earth would I choose to work for an SME unless I had to? The wages tend to be lousy with little room for advancement; profits go to the owners and their family members who clearly do very well. No thanks!
Guy
Gotcha.
Taiwan is heaven for bosses and hell for workers. The only exception to that is if you work for a good foreign company.
Let’s say one does high school or any kind of practical training to be carpenter.
What kind of starting salary he can expect?
Taiwan experienced negative population growth for three consecutive years and has one of the lowest total fertility rates in the world in 2022.
In a Taipei hospital, monthly newborns decreased significantly from 300 to 400 to just 50 to 80 in the past two years.
Moreover, the country’s infant mortality rate was notably high, with 4.1 deaths per 1,000 babies, two to three times higher than that of Japan and South Korea.
Nantou City in central Taiwan has decided to downsize its government as the city population declines and few children are being born.
Only 420 babies born last year.
A kindergarten in our area closed down due to lack of children last year.
Almost everywhere I go here it’s oldies, everytime we move apartment it’s middle aged and elderly that dominate the communities (we have moved quite a bit and all around Taiwan), very few kids about.
Even the local outdoor swimming pool, mostly old (fit) people. Same with doing outdoor exercise.
None of this is helped by the way young people are hothoused for ‘education’ purposes.
What’s interesting is most of the cities and towns aren’t doing much to try and reinvigorate themselves and attract young people. Even Taipei city’s youth population is hemorrhaging because of a triple whammy of being too expensive for families with a crazy low birth rate and low immigration.
And all of this is going hand in hand with a massive lack of workers in most industries. Look around, practically every restaurant and shop are hiring, they can’t get workers though cos of their shift requirements. I’m guessing it’s the same for factories and agriculture and construction.
Yup!
more importantly, for any industry: If someone is good at their job and has a few years experience and proof of ability and efficiency, what salary cna they expect?
This is the conversation I see many people skipping over. right to starting salary, rewarding the un excellent haha.
A paradox
On the one hand many societies fear problems on the horizon due to their declining population while the world at large appears to be overflowing with humans in societies that can not provide for their care
Sinister plans are thought to exist that proclaims the world is only survivable with no more than 500 million people therefore billions need to be killed
The corona vaccine is thought to be part of a worldwide sinister plan to bring about the death of billions in a manageable way for example
There are lots of humans but the great numbers of humans are of the ‘wrong ethnicity ‘ located in the wrong places
What we need is acceptance of equality to be availed to any and all human beings so that those already onboard planet earth should be homed in societies that need their active participation
Too utopian ! The human race is not one naturally inclined to love each other
We are a species born from conflict genetically programmed to compete with each other to achieve personal glory and gain . Started from when our sperm competed to be the one to fertilize the egg
We needed voices to teach us to love other living things because we are not naturally programmed to love
borders and rules seem to extrapolate that.
in my opinion, getting people to breed like they did in Taiwan in the past decade seems like a erroneous or partial spllution. having large population spikes is the issue, consistancy would help alleviate such growing pains. But these borders sometimes heavily control flows of human population (eg.immigration). The labor shortage here is easily remedied overnight by even just slightly welcoming immigrants here. instead they paid people to birth more babies whilst they must understand that investment in labor wont come to fruition for 15~20 years. more and more, may become 25 years and also less productive. immigration is a great step as a way to get by until automation catches up and easy jobs can be done away with.
So they need to open up citizenship after say 7 years of ARC to people who will do these jobs