Taiwan's birth rate projections 'too optimistic,' minister concedes

Taipei, March 16 (CNA) The birth rate projections Taiwan's government made in a 2024 population report were "too optimistic," the National Development Council (NDC) admitted Monday, after births in the country fell to an all-time low last year.

"The previous estimates were too optimistic, resulting in a relatively large discrepancy with the actual [birth] figures," NDC chief Yeh Chun-hsien (葉俊顯) said during questioning at the Legislative Yuan.

Yeh said a revised version of the NDC's "Population Projections for the Republic of China (Taiwan): 2024-2070" was due to be published in August.

"This time, the hypothetical scenarios and statistical model will be revised to assume the worst-case scenario for population conditions," Yeh said.

Yeh made the remarks after Taiwan's government reported an all-time monthly low of 6,523 births in February.

Births in 2025 fell for the 10th straight year to a record low of 107,812, or around 18,000 lower than the NDC's worst-case projection of 126,000.

2024 report projections

In the NDC's 2024 population report, it used Taiwan's 2023 total fertility rate (TFR) of 0.87 as a basis to project three scenarios for future fertility -- a high scenario of 1.3, a medium scenario of 1.0, and a low scenario of 0.8.

TFR refers to the average number of babies a woman will have during her lifetime. It must stay at or above 2.1 for a population to replace itself absent migration.

Based on those varying scenarios, the NDC projected that Taiwan's population would fall from a high of 23.6 million in 2019 to between 14.4 million (low variant) and 15.8 million (high variant) by 2070, or 61.4 percent to 67.7 percent of the 2024 population.

Taiwan's 2025 crude birth rate stood at 4.62 per 1,000 people. While the government has yet to announce the official TFR, Newsweek has estimated that is likely to be around 0.72, making Taiwan's birth rate the lowest in the world.

Big problem, no easy fix

The central government has had few solutions, as annual births in Taiwan have plummeted from over 193,000 in 2017 to 165,244 in 2020 and 107,812 in 2025, according to Ministry of the Interior statistics.

During Monday's hearing, lawmakers urged Yeh to study the example of South Korea, where the total fertility rate rose from a low of 0.72 in 2023 to 0.8 in 2025, driven by an increase in marriages and pro-natal policies.

In response, Yeh said there was a "serious" trend of people not marrying or having children, stemming from factors including anti-natal workplace policies, economic pressure, and changing values among young people.

According to Academia Sinica's research on the issue, stipends and subsidies alone will have only a "limited" impact on the birth rate, Yeh said.