The Island's Last Song: Even a Dragon Year Can't Save the 0.695

30-Second Overview: 2024 was the Year of the Dragon, a time when Taiwanese people should have rushed to have babies for good luck. Instead, there were 715 fewer infants than the previous year¹. For the first time in 48 years, the magic of the Dragon Year has failed. The following year, the fertility rate plummeted to 0.695, the lowest among sovereign nations². Over the past decade, the government has poured nearly NT$500 billion into pro-natalist measures³, yet it has consistently misunderstood one thing: Taiwanese people are not refusing to have children—over 70% of married couples have two or more children⁴; what is truly collapsing is non-marriage. Money is being distributed to married families, while the gap lies with those who remain unmarried. Looking globally (South Korea, Hungary, Singapore), no country has successfully bought its fertility rate back⁵. Therefore, the real question has shifted from "how to make people have more children" to "how to live with dignity on an island destined to shrink."

September 2024, Liugui District, Kaohsiung. It was the first day of school at Xinwei Elementary School.

Founded in 1921, this school has a 104-year history and is the only school in Liugui where Hakka (the Hakka language) is part of daily life⁶. During that day's flag-raising ceremony, there were only 29 students across five classes standing on the playground. Among them, the number of first-grade newcomers was zero⁷. Not a single one. The first time since the school's founding.

In August of the following year, Xinwei Elementary School merged into Meinong Guangxing Elementary School⁸. During her final semester, acting principal Chen Yi-ting said she wanted to focus on Hakka-style teaching in the future, "hoping to attract local students and ensure the continuous inheritance of Hakka culture"⁹. City Councilor Lin Fu-pao put it more bluntly: "Having one child per class is not a good thing" and "if schools should merge, they should merge"¹⁰.

Xinwei Elementary School is not an isolated case; it is a letter. A letter sent from Taiwan's rural areas forty years ago, which the cities are only just beginning to receive.

Even the Year of the Dragon No Longer Works

Taiwanese people have a memory for the zodiac. People rush to have children during the Year of the Dragon to seek good fortune, while they avoid the "Year of the Solitary Phoenix" (the Year of the Tiger) at all costs; this folk calendar has left its fingerprints on birth statistics for nearly fifty years. In 1976, the Year of the Dragon, 425,125 babies were born in Taiwan, a surge of 55,776 compared to the previous year¹¹. In the 1988 Year of the Dragon, births increased by 28,007; in 2000, by 21,651; and in 2012, by 32,854¹². Four Dragon years, four upward jumps—no exceptions.

Then came 2024.

This year is a Year of the Dragon, which logically should have been a rare small peak in fertility in recent years. Instead, the number of births was 134,856, which is 715 fewer than the 135,571 births in 2023¹³. For the first time in forty-eight years, a Year of the Dragon did not push the numbers up; instead, they fell. The magic of the zodiac officially failed this year.

If the failure of the Dragon year is merely a warning sign, then 2025 is an earthquake. In the Year of the Snake, births will plummet to 107,812, which is another 27,000 fewer than the Dragon year—a single-year drop of nearly 20%¹⁴. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) will crash from 0.89 in 2024 directly to 0.695¹⁵, causing Taiwan to overtake South Korea and become the place with the lowest fertility rate among sovereign nations¹⁶. In that same year, deaths will reach 200,000, creating a gap of −92,456 between births and deaths—the largest natural population decrease in Taiwan's history¹⁷.

💡 Did you know? This is how "0.695" is read. It is called the "period fertility rate," which means "if a woman were to give birth her entire life following the age-specific fertility rates of the year 2025, she would have 0.695 children." This does not equal "women today only have an average of 0.7 children in their lifetime." Because people in Taiwan are having children later and later, pushing births that should be spread over several years into the future, this "period" indicator is underestimated and compressed. Cheng Yen-hsin from Academia Sinica has calculated that looking solely at the period fertility rate, Taiwan's rate fell below 2 as early as 1985; however, when actually calculating by "generation," it wasn't until the generation of women born in 1965 that lifetime fertility fell below 2—a gap of a full twenty years¹⁸. So while 0.695 is tragic, the way it is tragic is more complex than it appears on the surface.

The numbers are frightening, but what is even more worth pausing to consider is that −715 from 2024. It proves one thing: even the lowest threshold of motivation—"seeking good luck by having one more child"—is something Taiwanese people are no longer willing to do. The problem hasn't even reached whether people can afford a second child; they aren't even having a first. And if they aren't having a first child, stepping back one level, the problem isn't in the delivery room—it is at the wedding.

It's Not That They Won't Have Children, It's That They Aren't Marrying

This is the most counter-intuitive part of the entire issue and the one most frequently misunderstood.

Whenever low fertility is discussed, people's minds automatically jump to "young people can't afford to raise children" or "housing prices are too high to dare have kids." This sounds like common sense. However, Cheng Yen-hsin from the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica has studied Taiwan's fertility data for decades, and her conclusion is: "The key code to low fertility is not that people won't have children, but more likely that they are not married yet."¹⁹

Her evidence is robust. In Taiwan, most couples have children after marriage, "with even over 70% having two or more children."²⁰ In other words, as long as they are married, Taiwanese people's willingness to have children is actually not that low. What has truly collapsed is the denominator: the number of people getting married. In 2024, there were 123,061 marriages; in 2025, this dropped to 104,376 pairs, a record low.²¹ The lifetime unmarried rate for those aged 45 to 49 is approaching 20%; it is estimated that by 2050, over 30% of men and over one-quarter of women will remain unmarried.²²

What about "having children without marriage"? In many European countries, non-marital childbearing accounts for the majority of births. But that is not the case in Taiwan. According to Cheng Yen-hsin's figures: "In Taiwan, non-marital childbearing accounts for only 2–4%, remaining unchanged for decades."²³

Source: Cheng Yen-hsin, Academia Sinica (Yen Zhi You Wu interview) + Marriage statistics from the Household Registration Administration, Ministry of the Interior (CNA report) ²⁰²¹²³

When you layer these three figures together, a completely different causal map emerges: fertility in Taiwan is almost entirely tied to marriage (with non-marital childbearing at only 2–4%), while the number of people getting married is collapsing. Therefore, the drop from the replacement level of 2.1 down to less than 1.1 is driven almost entirely by the declining marriage rate.²⁴ Rather than saying the fertility rate is being crushed by "affordability," it is more accurate to say it is being drained by "lack of marriage."

📝 Curator's Note: The common narrative reverses cause and effect. The mainstream story is "economic pressure → fear of having kids → low fertility," so the policy logic naturally becomes "distribute money to ease pressure → people will dare to have kids." But if the true breaking point is "not getting married," this causal chain is broken from the very first step. Cheng Yen-hsin puts it calmly: if the problem is "affordability," subsidies might work; but if the majority are unmarried, "economic policies are futile." Research from the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research points to the same conclusion: high housing prices and low wages are not the primary causes of remaining unmarried; more critically, "most unmarried people have the intention to marry, but after entering the workforce, they find it difficult to meet potential partners of marriageable age."²⁵ In other words, money cannot solve this problem. The money is being distributed at the wrong link in the chain.

Furthermore, one must be careful of a deeper trap: framing the decision not to have children as "young people being selfish." When women first gain the agency to say "no" to the expectation of childbearing, labeling that choice as selfish is both unfair and misdirected. After all, the primary cause from beginning to end is not that married people are having fewer children, but that people are not entering marriage at all. We will discuss this point further later.

Giving Money to the Wrong People

So, what has the government done over the past decade?

The answer is: it has distributed a lot of money. The total budget for the Countermeasures Plan for Low Fertility from 2007 to 2024 was approximately NT$485.1 billion²⁶. Investment related to children aged zero to six has increased steadily from NT$15 billion in 2016 to NT$140 billion by 2026, with single-year spending exceeding NT$120 billion²⁷. Childcare allowances currently provide NT$5,000 per month for the first child, NT$6,000 for the second, and NT$7,000 for the third and subsequent children; even the progressive tiered system has been abolished²⁸. In May 2026, Lai Ching-te added eighteen items to the "New Strategy for Taiwan's Population Policy," calling for a monthly growth allowance of NT$5,000 for those aged 0 to 18 and a centralized unified birth grant of NT$100,000²⁹.

The money has indeed been poured out. The problem is, it is almost entirely given to families who are already married and already have children. For the segment that is actually collapsing (those who are not married), these subsidies do not connect at all. This is what "giving money to the wrong people" means: the problem has never been that there isn't enough money, but that the target audience was chosen incorrectly from the start.

Even more embarrassing is that even when given to families who are "married but hesitant about whether to have another child," the effect is negligible. Yang Tzu-ting from the Institute of Economics at Academia Sinica conducted a very clever study using Taiwan's lottery wins as a "natural experiment": for those families who suddenly won a large prize of over one million dollars, which is equivalent to a "windfall birth subsidy" from heaven, would they have more children?

They would. But they only have 0.07 more children.

Converted, for every hundred families that win a large prize, the number of additional children born due to this unexpected wealth over six years is only about seven³⁰. Yang Tzu-ting's inference is direct: unless the scale of the subsidy is large enough to approach the total cost of raising a child, it will not sway the decision to reproduce³¹. Why is the money so ineffective? Because he found that what truly deters people is time, not money: "Raising a child is not just about increasing expenses; more importantly, it is the impact on personal time allocation."³² It costs about NT$10 million to raise a child in Taiwan to age 18, but what is even more daunting than the NT$10 million is the life parents must surrender during those eighteen years.

Wen Jai-hung from the Center for Population and Gender Studies at National Taiwan University is even more blunt. Having observed population issues for a long time, he passed judgment on the logic of "giving money to encourage births":

"The logic of giving you money to tell you to give birth does not work; pursuing a more equal and kinder living environment is the fundamental solution."³³

He added a comment explaining why this issue is so difficult to take seriously: "Population issues are always like boiling a frog in warm water; you will never feel that it is serious."³⁴ You would react within seconds if an earthquake arrived, but while the population crisis clearly has a warning period of ten or twenty years, because it is slow, it is constantly pushed to tomorrow. What Wen Jai-hung truly cares about is the underlying setting of Taiwanese society. He said, "If we continue to emphasize individual competition, this situation of unequal and extremely concentrated resource distribution cannot change."³⁵ In a society that places all the pressure on the individual to bear, having children becomes a high-risk personal gamble. No matter how much money is distributed, it cannot change the structure of that gamble.

⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint: Chiang Min-chin from Shih Hsin University added another blow from a different perspective, stating that in Taiwan, "society has privatized childrearing risks and socialized the population dividend": when children grow up, they pay taxes, serve in the military, and support the entire society—the benefits belong to everyone; but the risks, costs, and sacrifices of raising them must all be swallowed by the parents themselves. He therefore believes: "A low fertility rate is not a moral defect, but a price signal."³⁶ Young people not having children does not mean they are broken; it is more likely that they have calculated the math clearly. Within this framework, subsidies are "like painkillers, not surgery"³⁷; they can suppress temporary pain, but they cannot cure the underlying disease.

No Country Has Bought It Back

At this point, a natural counter-question arises: What about other countries? Surely someone has succeeded? Should Taiwan just copy their homework?

This is the single most important sentence in this entire article: To date, no developed country has managed to buy its fertility rate back up to the replacement level of 2.1 through policy. Not even one.

While this sounds pessimistic, it is a conclusion repeatedly verified by international organizations. Research from IZA World of Labor states that pro-natalist policies can indeed cause a slight rise in fertility rates, but "it is unlikely to push them back to replacement levels" ³⁸. Economist Gietel-Basten provided an even more colloquial footnote regarding low fertility in Asia: "Throwing money at it won't solve it." ³⁹ The evidence is clear:

• Hungary is often treated as the conservative model for pro-natalism. Under the Orbán government, family spending has long accounted for around 5% of GDP, placing it among the top tier in Europe, yet its fertility rate in 2024 was still only 1.39. The AEI even estimates that if the world wanted to raise fertility rates by 0.2 through policy alone, it would require an additional annual expenditure on the scale of approximately US$250 billion ⁴⁰.
• South Korea has poured in over US$270 billion, yet it remains one of the lowest in the world ⁴¹.
• Even "family-friendly" benchmarks like France and the Nordic countries cannot hold the line: France's fertility rate in 2025 was 1.56, its lowest since the World Wars; Finland hit a record low of 1.25 ⁴². The model nations are all falling.

South Korea's story is particularly worth dissecting because it is the easiest to misinterpret as a case where "policy is working." South Korea's fertility rate has indeed risen for two consecutive years: 0.72 in 2023, 0.75 in 2024, and returning to 0.80 in 2025 ⁴³. It sounds like there is hope. However, Statistics Korea itself stated that this rebound "is very likely driven by an increase in marriages since August 2022" ⁴⁴: this was a wave of delayed marriages following the pandemic, combined with a demographic dividend from an increased number of women in their early 30s who are of marriageable age. It is not the credit of any pro-natalist policy.

Source: Statistics Korea, Ministry of the Interior Household Registration Administration, 2025

(Note: The figure for Taiwan here refers to the period Total Fertility Rate (TFR); under World Bank/UN model metrics, Taiwan's rate is approximately 1.1. These are different systems and should not be conflated ⁴⁵.)

Furthermore, there lies a more cruel reality. Even though South Korea's fertility rate has risen for two years, its population is still shrinking ⁴⁶. Why? Because of "demographic inertia." A society's demographic structure is like a massive vessel; even if the fertility rate miraculously returned to 2.1 overnight, the number of women of childbearing age has already been significantly reduced, meaning the total population will continue to decline for several decades ⁴⁷. Taiwan's total population peaked at 23,603,121 at the end of 2019 ⁴⁸ and has been on a downward trajectory ever since. No policy can turn this slope around.

📝 Curator's Note: This is why the very framework of the question "Can pro-natalist policies reverse the low birth rate?" is flawed. To "reverse" means to pull the total population back up, and demographic inertia shows that this is physically impossible. The most policy can do at most is "slow the rate of decline"; it cannot "turn around and head upward." South Korea is living proof: a rising fertility rate and a continuing population decline are happening simultaneously, and they are not contradictory. Setting the goal as "saving the population" is destined to be a losing battle; changing the goal to "falling less hard and living better during the process of shrinking" is the only option still within reach.

To clarify a frequently cited old version: many reports claim that South Korea established a specialized "Population Strategy Ministry" and that policies became effective because of it. In fact, while Yoon Suk-yeol did indeed announce in May 2024 that such a ministry would be established and declared a national population emergency, the relevant legislation remained stuck in the National Assembly and ultimately died in the crib following Yoon's impeachment. This ministry was never actually established ⁴⁹. Using a non-existent ministry as a success story is a mistake.

The Countryside Has Already Been Through This

Returning to Xinwei Elementary School, where the playground has no first-grade newcomers.

To urbanites, "low fertility" often feels abstract—the MRT is still crowded, and there are still queues for kindergartens. But Taiwan's rural areas began receiving this letter forty years ago; now, it is simply the cities' turn to open it. Looking across Taiwan: there are 512 elementary schools with fewer than 50 students, and 1,025 schools with fewer than 100 students, accounting for 38.4% of all elementary schools nationwide⁵⁰. The total number of elementary school students is estimated to drop from 1.2 million in the 113th academic year to just 689,000 by the 129th academic year—more than half evaporated in fifteen years⁵¹.

In 2026, several elementary schools in Kaohsiung, such as Xingtian, Jiaxian Xiaolin, and Taoyuan Jianshan, will each have only one first-grade student⁵²; across all 79 schools in Kaohsiung City, only one school will be able to form a single first-grade class. In Tainan, branch schools like Danaitou She and Hedong Liuxi will also have only one first-grader each⁵³. There are already 110 schools across Taiwan where the number of newcomers is so low they can only form a single class.

Source: Ministry of Education Statistics (CNA report) ⁵⁰⁵¹

This time machine does not stop at elementary schools. Low fertility is a wave that climbs up by age: first hollowing out delivery rooms, then elementary schools, followed by universities, military barracks, the workplace, long-term care, and pensions—arriving punctually, station by station.

Universities are the first to be hit. The number of first-year freshmen will drop below 200,000 in the 114th academic year, and is estimated to fall to just 146,000 by the 129th academic year⁵⁴. The Private School Employees' Union estimates that when the number of freshmen drops to only 50,000 or 60,000, it will only be enough to sustain about 50 private universities, meaning approximately 40 schools will face closure⁵⁵. (To be honest: in 2025, the university enrollment gap actually hit a near five-year low, with only 18 schools lacking 1,220 students⁵⁶. The long-term "source of students cliff" is real, but short-term numbers will fluctuate due to school closures and reduced recruitment, so it is not perfectly linear.)

Military barracks have also received the letter. The number of men eligible for service fell below 100,000 (97,828 people) for the first time in 2023, and is estimated to drop to just 74,000 by 2031⁵⁷. The bankruptcy year for Labor Insurance has been pushed back from the original estimate of 2028 to 2031, sustained by an unprecedented subsidy of NT$387 billion⁵⁸. Regarding the talent gap in the workplace, the National Development Council estimates it will expand from 400,000 to 480,000 by 2030⁵⁹. Meanwhile, in 2025, Taiwan officially enters a "super-aged society," with the population aged 65 and over exceeding 20.06%, or 4.67 million people⁶⁰.

💡 Did you know? A crossover point occurred quietly in 2020: that year, the number of dogs and cats across Taiwan exceeded the number of children aged 0 to 14 for the first time. In recent years, there are approximately 2.79 million dogs and cats, still more than the child population aged 0 to 14 (approximately 2.68 million)⁶¹. The phrase "there are more pets than children" sounds like a lament, but it is actually a concrete metric of a society gradually shifting its objects of emotion, companionship, and care away from the next generation.

So where do the missing people come from? Part of them has already quietly filled the gap. In April 2025, the number of migrant workers in Taiwan reached 830,000, the highest in history; among them, there are 215,000 foreign caregivers looking after Taiwan's elderly⁶². Additionally, there are about 600,000 new immigrants who are poised to become Taiwan's fifth-largest ethnic group⁶³. In other words, while Taiwan is producing fewer children of its own, the labor force from other countries is silently propping up the island's factories and long-term care beds. This is an invisible solution, but also an ethical issue we have yet to properly face: we rely on their youth, yet we rarely engage in serious discussion about their circumstances and their future.

Whose Crisis Is It?

At this point, it is time to return to a sharper question: low fertility—whose crisis is it, really?

For the past decade or so, low fertility has almost always been framed as a "national security crisis": insufficient military recruits, labor shortages, economic recession, and pension black holes. It sounds urgent. However, an increasing number of people are starting to ask: does this framework turn women's bodies into tools for the state?

Li Meng-ying from the Lixin Foundation puts it bluntly: within the national security narrative used to encourage childbirth, "women will be viewed by the state as resources or tools for population reproduction" ⁶⁴. Lin Lu-hung of Taiwan Women's Link pointed out a frequently overlooked truth: "Taiwanese women are not unwilling to bear children; rather, they do not wish to be bound by marriage culture and the relationships between mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, and in-laws" ⁶⁵. Many women want children, but they do not want to be tied to the entire set of marital and familial structures that they find unacceptable.

This connects directly back to the previous thread regarding "non-marriage." The BBC interviewed several Taiwanese people who chose not to follow traditional paths. Guo Pei-yu, a 35-year-old editor at an independent publishing house, spoke without embellishment: "Marriage offers no benefits to women. My mother followed the script provided by society—getting married and having children—and lived in great pain within that framework." ⁶⁶ Mr. Chen, a 33-year-old working in a local government office, said, "Living alone is perfectly fine." ⁶⁷ In 2023, the proportion of unmarried people in Taiwan aged 35 to 39 reached 47.6% ⁶⁸, nearly half. When "not marrying and not having children" shifts from a marginal choice to a norm for nearly half the population, continuing to define it as a "crisis," "selfishness," or "being outside the norm" is itself worthy of questioning.

⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint: The solution proposed by Cheng Yen-hsin points the finger at society's underlying assumption regarding "who should be responsible for raising children": "Childrearing needs to become the responsibility of an entire village, society, and nation, rather than being treated as a woman's natural duty." ⁶⁹ This sentence flips the subtext of pro-natalist policies. As long as raising children is still tacitly accepted as a woman's duty, then subsidies, allowances, and slogans are merely adding money to an unfair division of labor without addressing the division itself.

Even the most fundamental assumption—that "total population decline = economic recession"—is being challenged. Some commentators point out the need to distinguish between "Total GDP" and "GDP per capita": while the number of people is decreasing, if each person creates higher value, per capita income may actually rise; it is estimated that the lower fertility rate could even lead to an increase in per capita income of about 10% by 2055 ⁷⁰. Looking at it from another angle, the entities truly bearing the crisis might be specific structures—such as the tax base, the military, the pension system, and domestic industries that require large numbers of workers—rather than every individual Taiwanese person. For an individual, a shrinking population does not necessarily mean doomsday.

If pro-natalist policies are destined to fail and labor shortages are a reality, does Taiwan have another path? CommonWealth Magazine gave an answer so blunt it was jarring: "Immigration is the only way to rescue the population crisis." ⁷¹ Yet, Taiwan has remained almost stationary on this path: foreigners with permanent residency number only about 40,000, accounting for less than 0.2% of the total population; in contrast, Canada brings in about 500,000 immigrants a year, and Japan's Specified Skilled Worker visa program took in 300,000 over six years ⁷². While Taiwan cries out about labor shortages, it keeps its doors tightly shut. Whether through pro-natalism or immigration, Taiwan has not yet truly begun to answer this question.

📝 Curator's Note: There is an unstated option standing right next to "pro-natalism": adaptation. The National Development Council has actually softened its stance, stating that AI and automation "are expected to become a solution" ⁷³. This is the language of "reorganizing production within a shrinking population," rather than the language of "reversing population decline." The subtext of the entire issue is quietly shifting: from "finding ways to make Taiwanese people have more children" to "accepting that Taiwan will shrink, and then finding ways to live well." The former is a battle that cannot be won; the latter has only just begun.

Living Well on an Island Destined to Shrink

The most cruel and honest truth in demography is this: there are almost no miracles.

After ten years of pro-natalist efforts and nearly NT$500 billion spent, even a Dragon Year cannot be bought back. The component of the fertility rate being crushed by an inability to afford children is far less significant than it being drained by non-marriage. For a decade, the government has been handing out money to address "the fear of having children," but that money goes to those who are already married, failing to bridge the gap where the actual collapse is occurring. Even if money were precisely placed into the hands of every hesitant family, Yang Tzu-ting's lottery experiment showed it would only be worth 0.07 of a child. Looking globally—Hungary, South Korea, France, Northern Europe—no country has successfully bought its fertility rate back up to replacement levels. After Taiwan's total population peaked in 2019, no policy has been able to turn this downward slope around.

Therefore, rather than offering another empty platitude like "Taiwan needs a better society," this article intends to offer a shift in perspective: we may have been asking the wrong questions. For ten years, the answer to the question "How can we make Taiwanese people have more children?" has been 0.695, and it is reflected in the empty playground of Xinwei Elementary School. The two things that truly need to be asked are: how can we ensure that those who actually want to marry and have children are not bound by an entire set of structures they cannot accept; and how can we live with dignity, warmth, and a sense of mutual support on an island destined to become smaller and older?

On a day during the 2024 Year of the Dragon, there was not a single first-grade student wearing a new uniform or carrying an oversized backpack on the playground of Xinwei Elementary School.

It was a very quiet scene. So quiet that you cannot help but wonder: how much longer will this island spend shouting at delivery rooms before it turns around to properly look at those who are already here on the playground?

The singing may grow quieter, but as long as someone is still singing, we have not yet reached the final song.

Further Reading:

• Rural Education in Taiwan — When rural areas enter a low-birthrate era forty years ahead of cities, small rural schools are where this letter arrives first.
• Education System and Academic Advancement Culture — The withdrawal of universities and the cliff of student sources are inextricably linked to how society views "academic advancement."
• Development of Long-term Care Systems in Taiwan — As those aged 65 and above surpass 20% and foreign caregivers support 215,000 beds, long-term care is the other side of the low-birthrate phenomenon.
• Taiwan's Robotics Industry — If a shrinking population is inevitable, automation will be one of the key answers to "reorganizing production within a diminishing population."
• The Expansion and Withdrawal of Higher Education in Taiwan — The wall of low birthrates hits universities: after increasing from 58 to 148 institutions, how do schools close, and who bears the cost?

References