As Taiwan faces a declining birth rate, systemic reform may be the only solution. Professor Stuart Giettle-Basten from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology joins TaiwanPlus to discuss its root causes and why financial incentives alone fall short in addressing the deeper societal challenges impacting family planning.
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00:00So what do you think are the root causes of Taiwan's low birth rates?
00:04At the minute, the fertility rate is very low because it is a reflection of the challenges
00:12which are being faced in Taiwanese society at the moment around getting started in life,
00:17building a life, and then starting a family and growing a family.
00:22And just money and incentives is only ever going to be a part of that, right?
00:27It's a reflection of fundamental issues in the system and of these kind of, I think,
00:34broken institutional frameworks. And of course, these factors are the same as here in Hong Kong
00:40or whether it's in Singapore or in mainland China or in South Korea, Japan. You know,
00:45these are all of these issues around getting a good job, getting started in life, getting a house.
00:52Now, many Taiwanese government policies are focusing on financial incentives like subsidies
00:59or social housing to boost birth rate. Do you think these measures are effective?
01:05So when we look around the world, financial incentives to boost the birth rate don't work.
01:13They don't work in terms of changing the attitudes of people around the total number of children
01:20they're going to have. You know, if a young person with a graduate job cannot get a flat
01:28in Taipei until they are 35, then I'm sorry, something is wrong with the system.
01:35Something is wrong with either the property market or the labour market, right? And childbearing is
01:43just a downstream consequence of that. So giving people money to have children is not going to
01:48remedy this at all. Given the challenges young people face today, many of them are hesitant
01:55about marriage and parenthood. What other measures could be taken to encourage people in Taiwan to
02:01have more children? I think the first thing we need to do is stop trying to encourage childbirth
02:07because I think it actually just it becomes counterproductive because younger people have
02:13got enough to worry about. We have to listen to what people's concerns are and try to respond to
02:19them. And if that means looking very differently at the way we structure and organise life,
02:26society, work, and that would mean changing everything. It would mean changing the housing
02:31market, the education system, better rights at work. It would mean changing the culture and the
02:36mindset of men to be much more involved in domestic work and in child rearing, right?
02:45So it would require a root and branch change or rethink of how society is actually run.
02:52That's going to be extremely difficult.