The Declining Birthrate

    In our modern society, the rate of the birth is lower and lower. According to the information from Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, it shows that the average number of births given by married women is 2.52 people. Actually, this figure is declining year by year. For example, most of families have two children or one kid nowadays. However, many families have five or even more children in the early society. The change of the times and a feminist consciousness cause the declining birthrate. Of course, it results in closing schools down or decreasing laborers.

Nowadays, we have a great number of career women. Because time has changed, we also have altered our stereotypes of women. In our traditional concept, women should follow the conventional virtues: staying at home, taking care of family, and doing housework. Furthermore, what their husbands say is ALWAYS right. Nevertheless, in modern society, a feminist consciousness has grown up obviously. Women don’t just stay at home and do housework. They step out of the house and have their own jobs. Hence, to modern women, job plays an important role in their lives and marriage is not their only central life anymore. This increases the tendency of late marriage and decreases the rate of birth.

    The pressure of economy is also one of the most significant reasons to bring about the declining birth. Now, the daily expenses like water bills, electricity fees, and consolidated income tax is much higher than before, not to mention the fee of children education. From a baby to an adult, parents have to spend a great deal of money on children, such as milk money, tuition fees, and medical expenses. Especially, it is the age of high unemployment and high commodity price so the financial burden is even heavier. Due to these factors, newly-married couples do not dare to give birth to babies.

    If this situation keeps worsening, we must confront with population problems. The first to be affected is the school. There are thousands of schools in Taiwan, including primary schools, high schools, and universities. Because of the population decrease, it may lead to closing schools down or reducing the amount of classes. In fact, this situation has happened quietly in our society. For examples, some schools don’t enroll enough students and some schools combine with others. Even some departments in the university have been closed. Therefore, the existence of schools will become a pending problem.

    The reduction of laborers is another effect. It also implies that our population of young people diminishes. The enterprise doesn’t have enough laborers so it increases the number of foreign workers. Because the population of old people rises, the burden of caring for the old becomes heavier. These situations influence national policies like welfare policies, nursery caring, and the immigration policy of foreign laborers. The government has to care about the situation and stop it to be worse.

    The declining birthrate arises from many factors like feminist consciousness and economic pressure. It also causes that schools are closure and the population of young people diminishes. The declining birthrate becomes a serious issue to our society. In order to alleviate the situation, the government advocates that people give birth to more babies. There are also some policies to encourage people to do so. For instance, women who give birth to the third child will have child-raising allowance. Actually, reducing the declining birthrate is not only the government’s responsibility but also ours. ( 578 words)