
Sumaila Zaman
Sumaila Zaman is a Senior Sub Editor at India.com, where she covers key developments and trending events across education, world affairs, business, and current news. At India.com, she specializes in b ... Read More
Population is directly related to a nation’s military strength and security, as large and youthful populations provide human resources to the armed forces, defense industries, and future national resilience. When fertility rates decline slowly and steadily, the share of youth decreases. This also means the pool of eligible recruits shrinks, and the state can no longer maintain adequate troop levels, despite compulsory service. Demographically imbalanced populations not only constrain active defense capacity, but they also put national security at risk, leaving the population vulnerable to external threats and larger adversarial states with significantly greater human resources. And so, several countries in today’s world are giving incentives to their citizens to increase the population.
China’s biggest enemy is struggling with a declining birth rate, resulting in a continuing drop in its total population. Furthermore, the segment population of young adults is also decreasing in size. This has a measurable effect on the military position of that country. Though compulsory military service is required, the military still does not have enough young men to serve. The government seems to be responding to these developments by making serious overtures to the general populace to have more children, offering several incentives, one of which would include roughly Rs 3 lakh (approx. $ 3,320) if they have one child, and about Rs 6 lakh (approx. USD 7,000) if they have twins. Well, the country is Taiwan.
In response to this, the Taiwan government is encouraging citizens to have children. It has implemented several plans under which families can receive about Rs 3 lakh (around $3,320) for one child and about Rs 6 lakh (around $7,000) for twins.
As reported by Taiwan News, the new program provides $3,320 (Rs 2,92,462) to parents for one child, and $7,000 (Rs 6,16,636) for twins. Benefits from the previous program ranged between $1,300 and $2,300 for each child based on the mother’s employment status.
Taiwan is actually projected to become a super-aged society by the end of this year, meaning that more than 20 percent of its population is 65 years of age or older. The island nation has one of the lowest fertility rates worldwide. In 2022, Taiwan had a total fertility rate of 0.87.
which is a significant distance from the 2.1 children per woman needed for replacement level, based on research conducted by the French Institute for Demographic Studies. Furthermore, Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior announced that 2024 would mark the ninth consecutive year of declining birth rates in the country.
Countries need to maintain a total fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to reach what the French Institute for Demographic Studies defines as the “replacement level” — the number of children a couple must have to replace themselves in the population.
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