TAIWAN: Implications of Fertility at Replacement Levels

Abstract

Using Taiwan as an illustration this paper demonstrates how rapidly declining birth rates in countries having a preponderance of young persons will nevertheless result in considerable population growth for decades. Taiwans population will continue to grow for at least 60 years even if fertility rates drop immediately to levels producing about 2 children per family. Taiwans birth rate fell from 42 in 1958 to 28 in 1968; in the same period the net reproduction rate fell from over 2.6 to 2. Even under such favorable circumstances a developing country can expect to have a very considerable continuing population growth partly because of the population age structure created by its past demographic history and partly because net reproduction rates do not fall to 1 instantaneously. The situation in Japan is a good case in point of how and why this happens. Japans fertility has been just about at the 2-child standard (net reproduction rate of about 1) since about 1955. Yet its population is not expected to stop growing until about 2015. It is still growing by about a million additional persons per year. Taiwans population will grow until it reaches between 22 and 37 million depending on how rapidly the age-specific rates fall to the replacement level characteristic of Japan. For example attaining the Japanese rates by 1988 instead of 1978 would mean that the maximum population would be reached about 5 years later and would be about 2.6 million larger. Taiwans official policy does not set such long-range goals.