The Effects of Low Birth Rates in Taiwan
According to a report conducted by World Population Review, an independent organization established in US, the birth rate of Taiwan in 2019 is ranked last among about two hundred countries. The result heavily frustrates those efforts made by our government to boost the birth rate, and it shows that there is still a long road for Taiwan to revive the population. For decades, statesmen and experts have kept questioning Taiwanese’s gradually reduced desire to have babies; however, like other sociological phenomena, reasons behind any demographical condition may be too complicated to be answered and imaged. Our world-renowned low birth rate can be attributed to many related social problems, and the influences led by it are very noteworthy that may actually further result in educational, economic, and cultural crises in Taiwan.
On account of the poor birth rate, many knotty problems will be directly brought to the educational field. From the viewpoint of institutions, a PhD student of Chao-yang University of Technology, Wang (2017) says that the challenges faced by education industry include the transformation of the curriculum planning, the educational norms and concepts as well as the industrial structure. What’s more, schools have to deal with the development of human resources. On the other hand, a master’s student of National Chung-Cheng University, Chien (2015), advises in his thesis that the schools should optimize the teaching quality to increase the effectiveness of education. As for the future of the whole country, lack of new generations definitely makes us incapable of cultivating enough talents in every vocational field, and thus weakens our national competiveness.
Furthermore, from the aspect of economy, if we fail to provide enough youth power to devote in every industry, a serious crisis will influence Taiwan’s economy. Concerning this aspect, Lin, one of the master’s students of Shih-hsin University has provided us some data. In Lin’s (2011) research, she confirms the causation between birth rate and economic growth. Besides, we can get further explanation from Lin’s (2016) research, which verifies that the lack of youth in labor market not only changes the structure of labor market but also cuts back the economic growth and capital stock of the whole country. Young people are the main contributors of creativity and energy to run the whole community and to motive the economic activities; therefore, it is predictable that our economic condition will be slumped once we do not have enough youth to devote in the market.
In addition, having fewer and fewer descendants will also be harmful to our cultural heritages. One of my friends, whose family is famous for manufacturing ceramics for three generations in Ying-ge, New Taipei City, once sighed, saying that all masters in the factory are aged, and there is no young people to pass down the precious asset of craft that has been conserved for thousands of years. Not only ceramics, other Taiwanese cultural treasures such as Taiwanese Opera, wood crafting and bamboo weaving are likewise facing the same plight. As reported by Chiu’s (2013) research, Wang-Ye Boats Code, which is brought by immigrants in Ming and Qing Dynasties and becomes a widespread culture in Southern Taiwan, is changed its quantity and troupes so much in order to respond Taiwan’s declined birth rate in recent years. Once losing those valuable cultural assets, our ethnic identity and roots will gradually vanish as well. From these examples, we can see that the low birth rate may endanger our cultural assets.
To sum up, we know the low birth rate will cause across-the-board problems in educational, economic, and cultural aspects of our society. However, there are still many aspects left, and it is almost impossible to list all the complicated and troublesome issues resulted from the deteriorating condition of birth rate. The only thing can be sure is the low birth rate brings more drawbacks than advantages for us; thus, we should make some effort to leave the last place in the international birth rate ranking.
References
World Population Review. (2020). Taiwan Population 2020. Retrieved from
https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/taiwan-population/
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