Getting real about birth incentives

To address the nation’s declining birthrate and encourage young people to marry and have children, the government is planning to extend statutory marriage leave for workers from eight days to 14, subsidizing employers for the six additional days of wages.

An extra six days of marriage leave is welcome, but as a policy designed to encourage marriage and having children, is it truly a meaningful incentive? The issue is not just about whether young people can afford to marry and have children, but about whether they even want to. There are three main reasons for this.

First, young people are far less concerned with how much marriage leave they get than they are with what comes next. Housing prices and rents are high, while wages struggle to keep pace with the cost of living.

Once a couple has children, they begin racking up housing, childcare and education expenses. If both parents work, who looks after the children? If one takes time off work, what happens to their career and the family’s income?

Marriage leave lasts two weeks, but the marriage might last 50 years, and raising a child is a responsibility lasting two decades. Put side by side, and the chasm between the policy and the problem becomes obvious.

The second issue goes deeper than money: Family values are changing. The education system and society have long been placing increasing emphasis on individual autonomy, rights and self-fulfillment.

These are values worth cherishing, but in teaching the next generation to prioritize “what I want” over “who am I willing to take responsibility for?”, settling down goes from a shared project of building a life together into a cost-benefit analysis.

When marriage is seen as sacrificing a person’s freedom, having children as meaning a lower quality of life and family responsibilities as a burden, subsidies alone are unlikely to rekindle the desire to build a family.

The third issue is most critical for the government: young people’s confidence in the future. When a person is willing to marry and have children, it means they believe tomorrow is worth looking forward to, and that society is worth bringing children into.

Population policy is ultimately a policy of confidence. If people know that a lifetime of hard work might still not be enough to afford a home; if the gap between their earnings and the cost of living remains a constant source of anxiety; and if new subsidies are rolled out without a stable outlook on housing, employment, childcare and long-term prospects, then the government loses that confidence.

Childcare allowances, daycare subsidies, parental leave, rental subsidies, housing for newlyweds and families, and increased marriage leave — this string of policies makes it appear that the government is doing a great deal, but the number of births continues to decline. Quantity does not guarantee effectiveness; providing more subsidies does not mean the core problem has been addressed.

The low birthrate is a structural issue concerning the country’s future. The impact would be felt not only in school enrollment, but also in the workforce, industry, tax revenues, healthcare, long-term care and military staffing.

In this birthrate crisis, what Taiwan truly needs to save is an entire generation’s hopes for marriage, their sense of connection to family and their confidence in the nation’s collective future. When young people no longer believe in tomorrow, can six extra days of marriage leave truly bring about the next generation?

Voyu Poiconu is an adjunct lecturer at Meiho University and former deputy minister of the Council of Indigenous Peoples.