Taiwan last year recorded a total fertility rate of 0.695 — the lowest ever measured for any country in the world. No amount of cash incentives, childcare reform, or parental leave policy has come close to reversing it. And without a growing pool of young people, the island's decade-long national security posture is starting to look like a promise it cannot keep.
Italy Called Itself 'Dying' At 1.35 — Taiwan Now Sits At 0.695
In 2015, Italy's then-health minister Beatrice Lorenzin made international headlines by declaring her country "a dying nation" after its fertility rate fell to a historic low of 1.35. The remark was treated as a dramatic warning. Taiwan's fertility rate that same year had already fallen to 1.17 — below the level that had shocked Italy — and few outside the island were paying much attention.
A decade later, the situation has moved from alarming to almost beyond comparison. According to figures released by Taiwan's Ministry of Interior, the first half of 2026 saw just 46,344 births — down 9,031 from the same period a year earlier. Taiwan's total population stands at 23,243,565, a year-on-year decline of 103,176, and the island has now recorded 30 consecutive months of negative population growth. Last year, the annual birth total fell to 107,000 and the total fertility rate plunged to 0.695, setting a new historic low and the steepest single-year decline on record. This year, births are widely expected to fall below 100,000 for the first time.
Italy's fertility rate, which once prompted ministerial despair, now stands at 1.22 — still nearly double Taiwan's. If Taiwan's current fertility rate holds, demographic projections suggest the island's population could halve to below 12 million by 2065.
Demographics Decide The Fate Of Nations, Scholars Warn
The stakes of this trajectory extend well beyond social policy. British demographer Paul Morland has argued that demographic change is "the most profound transformation experienced by the modern world." The historical record supports this: the rise of European powers and, later, the United States was underwritten in large part by young, growing populations that created economies of scale, provided military capacity, and sustained cycles of innovation and growth.
The second great demographic transition now underway — population slowdown, structural aging, and absolute decline in many developed economies — is reshaping that equation in reverse. Taiwan sits at the most extreme end of this global trend. Its population is aging faster and its birth rate falling more steeply than virtually any comparable society. The downstream effects span nearly every domain: slower long-term economic growth, a shrinking labor supply, school closures due to falling enrollment, an aging electorate, and mounting pressure on pension and healthcare systems.
A Shrinking Youth Pool Now Threatens Taiwan's Military Readiness
The most politically charged implication of Taiwan's demographic collapse concerns national defense. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party has staked a decade of governance on what it calls "resisting China and protecting Taiwan" — a posture that assumes a credible military deterrent. That assumption rests on a supply of young people that is dwindling rapidly.
During Taiwan's post-war baby boom, the island recorded roughly 400,000 births per year. By 1984, the fertility rate had fallen below the 2.1 replacement threshold. The decline accelerated through the 2000s: 1.3 in 2003, 1.17 in 2015, and now 0.695. Whether Taiwan relies on a volunteer military or conscription, the basic arithmetic of defense readiness — a steady flow of military-age recruits — becomes harder to satisfy as each year's birth cohort shrinks. The same labor scarcity is spreading across industry, where businesses in nearly every sector already struggle to find new talent.
Four Decades Of Birth Incentives Have Not Slowed The Fall
The failure is not for lack of trying. Beginning in the Ma Ying-jeou administration, when low fertility was first declared a "national security issue," successive governments at both the central and local levels have introduced a wide range of measures: direct cash payments to new parents, subsidized workplace childcare, expanded parental leave, and proposals to use the tax system to reward families with children. None of it has worked.
Annual births averaged above 200,000 during the Ma years. They have since been cut nearly in half in a remarkably short span of time. The trend has continued unbroken through every administration and every policy package. What the numbers suggest — and what this editorial argues — is that Taiwan's demographic crisis has now outgrown the category of "national security problem." It has become something closer to an existential one. The government and society at large need to move beyond diagnosing the problem and begin an honest reckoning with why every solution attempted so far has fallen short.
A return to the birth levels of previous decades is almost certainly out of reach. But halting what has effectively been a demographic freefall is not an unreasonable ambition — and it is one that Taiwan's political leadership has yet to meet. （Related： SK Hynix Reveals Starting Pay as AI Boom Drives Record Hiring and Tax Haul ｜ Latest ）
