Taipei Times, March 12 2011

Last month, Japan’s Statistics Bureau released preliminary figures gathered from its most recent population census which showed that the population at the end of October was 128.05 million, up a mere 0.2 percent from the previous census in 2005. These figures show that Japan’s population is growing at the slowest pace since it started conducting censuses in 1920.The main reason for the slowdown in population growth is the falling birthrate. The Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, worried about the future supply of labor and the burden of looking after the elderly, has announced various incentives to encourage childbirth.In Taiwan, the Department of Health and the Council for Economic Planning and Development have been doing the same thing. However, the way the government has been talking about the falling birthrate is not entirely in keeping with the real situation, and some of the policies it has come up with have been criticized as being hastily drafted to accommodate popular opinion.Although the falling birthrate will result in fewer babies for obstetric departments to deliver and fewer patients for pediatric departments, encouraging more people to have babies is not the right way to come to these departments’ assistance. Medical technology can be transferred to other departments, or reinvested in areas with poor access to healthcare. Besides, medical education does not have to be so narrowly specialized and departmentalized. The government could start off by making adjustments in the training of young doctors.The average age at which people get married for the first time has risen by more than five years in Japan and Taiwan. It should also be borne in mind that divorce rates and the proportion of women who never marry change over the years. So when people employ simple statistical definitions to make comparisons between different countries and then deduce that the fertility rate for women of childbearing age in Taiwan is the lowest in the world, such results should be interpreted with caution.

The number of babies born in Taiwan has been falling for the last four decades. Last year, fewer than 170,000 babies were born — only about 40 percent of the all-time high. However, this gradual fall is partly because of the ebb of the post-war high tide of childbirth, or the baby boom. Another factor is that, following the move of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government and its armed forces from China in 1949, there were more men than women in Taiwan. In those early years, this gender imbalance had the impact of lowering the average age at which women got married, which in turn pushed up the birthrate.These days the gender balance is very nearly even. This, combined with the later age at which women get married now that they enjoy greater economic independence, naturally means that they have less opportunity to bear children.While advances in science and technology, and improvements in healthcare and hygiene, have prolonged life expectancy, they have also greatly increased labor productivity, so that it is easier to provide for the material needs of society’s elder members. It is not necessary, therefore, to have more manpower available to ensure that the elderly are properly cared for.Those who say that women of childbearing age ought to have 2.1 babies each, on average, in order to sustain population growth are out of touch with reality. Data from the EU’s 27 member countries show that, except when large numbers of refugees emigrate because of war, women of childbearing age only need to have an average of 1.4 babies each, such as is the case in various southern European countries, to sustain a gradual increase in the population. When the fertility rate is about 1.7, with the added factor of a flexible and open immigration policy, that is sufficient for the population to grow quite quickly, as it has in western and northern European countries.