In 2024, the share of the population in Taiwan aged 65 and older accounted for approximately 19.2 percent of the total population. While the share of old people on the island increased gradually over recent years, the percentage of the working-age population and the children have both declined. Taiwan’s aging population With one of the lowest fertility rates in the world and a steadily growing life expectancy, the average age of Taiwan’s population is increasing quickly, and the share of people aged 65 and above is expected to reach around 38.4 percent of the total population in 2050. This development is also reflected in Taiwan’s population pyramid, which shows that the size of the youngest age group is only half of the size of age groups between 40 and 60 years. The rapid aging of the populations puts a heavy burden on the social insurance system. Old-age dependency is expected to reach more than 70 percent by 2050, meaning that by then three people of working age will have to support two elders, compared to only one elder supported by four working people today. Aging societies in East Asia Today, many countries in East Asia have very low fertility rates and face the challenges of aging societies. This is especially true among those countries that experienced high economic growth in the past, which often resulted in quickly receding birth rates. Japan was one of the first East Asian countries witnessing this demographic change, as is reflected in its high median age. South Korea had the lowest fertility rate of all Asian countries in recent years, and with China, one of the largest populations on earth joined the ranks of quickly aging societies.

Taiwan's aboriginal ethnic minority population statistics by region monthly

In 2024, the total population of Taiwan increased to approximately 23.4 million people. The significant drop in 2021 and 2022 was mainly due to people leaving the island during the coronavirus pandemic, while the natural growth rate was also slightly negative. The return of many people in 2023 led to a growth in population. According to national statistics and projections, population numbers entered a general declining path in 2020. Taiwan's demographic development Taiwan experienced rapid population growth in the 1950s and 60s, but alongside with economic development, growth rates decreased significantly. Falling birth figures have also been attributed to Taiwan’s family planning policy, which was aimed at keeping population growth at check. This led to a situation on the island where overall population density was very high and still growing, while the total fertility rate dropped quickly and eventually reached extremely low levels compared internationally. In the 21st century, the challenges of a quickly aging society became more and more apparent and the government initiated family friendly and birth promoting policies. However, fertility still kept on decreasing and reached a historical low in 2010 at 0.9 births per woman on average, and only in recent years has the number of births increased slightly. Implications of an aging society Today's Taiwan, like many East Asian societies, faces the challenges of a rapidly aging population. While the share of the population aged 65 and older accounted to around 18 percent in 2023, it is projected to reach 43 percent in 2060. The old-age dependency ratio, which denotes the relation of people of 65 years and above to the working-age population, is expected to reach around 87 percent in those years. This puts heavy pressure on the working people and the economy as a whole. However, compared to mainland China, which is in a very much comparable demographic situation, Taiwan enjoys the advantage of a relatively wealthy society, which helps to curb the negative economic effects of an aging population.

The population of the world, allocated to 1 arcsecond blocks. This refines CIESIN’s Gridded Population of the World project, using machine learning models on high-resolution worldwide Digital Globe satellite imagery.

Visionary research allows for applications that few people had in mind at the time the research was conducted. When Chen and Fried worked in 1964 through millions of ten-year-old census sheets and produced a book filled on 969 pages only with numbers, who but the researchers might not have thought of a waste of time and money? Fifty years later, using a relational database and an intelligent interface, the data have been digitised by the authors of this paper into a data set, called "thakbong56: The ROC census on Taiwan and Penghu in 1956".

The interest in the geographic distribution of names in Taiwan, today, as in 1956, relates on the one hand to the emic use of names as an idealised compass in search for an identity. Through one character, a name suggests to its bearer up to thousands of years of history.

Driven by the interest in names as collective traits, Chen and Fried sampled in 1964 one quarter of the 9.311.312 personal census cards of 1956. The cards had been stored after 1956 in 361 packages, lumping village and city communities together into townships and city districts. Data on Kinmen and Mazu are not reported.

The administrative classification implied by the physical packages formed the first dimension of the 3-dimensional table that Chen and Fried assembled. The 1027 attested Chinese names formed the second, and the ethno-linguistic classification, which distinguishes Fukien, Kwangtung, Others, Aborigines and Mainlanders, the third. Each of the 1.855.540 table cells reports one quarter of the people with name X, living in 1956 in place Y, and being ethno-linguistically classified as Z. The values of two dimensions, for example, CHEN2 (陳) and Taipei, define a probability distribution for the third dimension, for example, [Fukien: 76 per cent, Kwangtung: 2 per cent, Mainlander: 21 per cent].

What is logically a tree-dimensional table is restricted to one of three logically possible views, when printed on paper. The probability distribution for CHEN2 and Kwangtung, for example, is hidden in 361 pages. Thus, not one, but three volumes a 1000 pages would have been required to represent all views. Probably as a compensation, Chen and Fried produced a Volume II that shows in maps the spatial distribution of some names under certain ethno-linguistic parameters.

The data itself reflects very much the time in which it has been gathered, the technical approach and the prevailing ideology. The storage of papers after the census caused first the unnecessarily broad administrative classification. Then, in 1964 no computer was used. Inconsistencies showed up during the digitisation in margins and higher level tables and have been silently corrected, assuming the more elementary value to be the correct oneii. Finally, social tensions and strong ideologies in the time of the census left their imprint on the data.

First of all, the ethnic classification foresees neither ethnic changes across generations nor mixed ethnic ancestry. In Taiwan, however, Indigenous groups, Holo and Hakka have been constantly crossing ethnic boundaries through adoption, inter-ethnic marriage or acculturation. Second, the language of the people was used as prevailing criterion of the census, and levelled out ethnic variations in a period, the KMT hoped to reconquer the Chinese mainland through the ‘Chinese nation’. Holo-speaking Hakka and Pepo communities have, to different degrees and depending on the local administration, been classified as Fukien, as the comparison with older, Japanese census data shows.

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women had the highest fertility rate of any ethnicity in the United States in 2022, with about 2,237.5 births per 1,000 women. The fertility rate for all ethnicities in the U.S. was 1,656.5 births per 1,000 women. What is the total fertility rate? The total fertility rate is an estimation of the number of children who would theoretically be born per 1,000 women through their childbearing years (generally considered to be between the ages of 15 and 44) according to age-specific fertility rates. The fertility rate is different from the birth rate, in that the birth rate is the number of births in relation to the population over a specific period of time. Fertility rates around the world Fertility rates around the world differ on a country-by-country basis, and more industrialized countries tend to see lower fertility rates. For example, Niger topped the list of the countries with the highest fertility rates, and Taiwan had the lowest fertility rate.

Demographic characteristics and comorbidities of the pneumococcal pneumonia and control groups in Taiwan, 2004 (n = 2235).

BackgroundTuberculosis (TB) disease reactivates from distant latent infection or recent (re)infection. Progression risks increase with age. Across the World Health Organisation Western Pacific region, many populations are ageing and have the highest per capita TB incidence rates in older age groups. However, methods for analysing age-specific TB incidence and forecasting epidemic trends while accounting for demographic change remain limited.MethodsWe applied the Lee-Carter models, which were originally developed for mortality modelling, to model the temporal trends in age-specific TB incidence data from 2005 to 2018 in Taiwan. Females and males were modelled separately. We combined our demographic forecasts, and age-specific TB incidence forecasts to project TB incidence until 2035. We compared TB incidence projections with demography fixed in 2018 to projections accounting for demographic change.ResultsOur models quantified increasing incidence rates with age and declining temporal trends. By 2035, the forecast suggests that the TB incidence rate in Taiwan will decrease by 54% (95% Prediction Interval (PI): 45%-59%) compared to 2015, while most age-specific incidence rates will reduce by more than 60%. In 2035, adults aged 65 and above will make up 78% of incident TB cases. Forecast TB incidence in 2035 accounting for demographic change will be 39% (95% PI: 36%-42%) higher than without population ageing.ConclusionsAge-specific incidence forecasts coupled with demographic forecasts can inform the impact of population ageing on TB epidemics. The TB control programme in Taiwan should develop plans specific to older age groups and their care needs.

Basic demographic characteristics of the participants.