The study of the women who wouldn’t have children living in Taipei in the low fertility period in Taiwan
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
SIE, JYUN-ROU
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
Due to the very low fertility and rapidly declining fertility rate in recent Taiwan, this study discusses how come some women wouldn’t like to have children in Taiwan. The report takes having children as a rational choice that made by the woman, and the choice is related to the cost of rearing children. It divides the reasons that women wouldn’t have children in to two parts, direct costs and opportunity costs according to Gary S. Becker’s theory about the demand of children. The study adopts the approach of literature analysis and the method of in-depth interview, it analyzes the context of a woman raising children in Taiwan nowadays from various literature, and the author had interviewed 15 women who don’t have children living in Taipei. The study tries to figure out the concepts and the attitudes of these women and finds out the main reasons why they wouldn’t have children.
As the result, the main reason that these women wouldn’t like to have children is primarily owing to the opportunity cost, but the direct cost is still the obstruction for them. The direct costs they care about can be divided to four points: (1) It’s not easy to keep a stable income, and the cost of living in Taipei is getting higher. (2) The direct cost of raising children is too expensive. (3) Government’s help in sharing direct costs or some other welfare policy is poor. (4) The concept of having children is changing, apart from the traditional one. The opportunity costs they care about can be divided to four points: (1) The will of woman pursuing her personal goal is getting stronger (2) the dilemma between working and mothering (3) The traditional Chinese culture of mothering (4) Paying efforts to raising children is another form of the opportunity cost. Most of them making decisions by taking both the direct and opportunity costs into consideration, instead of any single one. And, the different social status they are in, the different cost they care much more about. Women who are under 30 or unmarried are more worried about the direct costs. And the women who are over 30 and married are more worried about the opportunity costs. No matter the main cause they care about is either direct or opportunity cost, it shows these women are not satisfied of the environment in Taiwan and thus not willing to have children. They also emphasize that the context in Taiwan now is lack of appeal to them to have children.
The personal economic condition, the uprising sense of being self-independent as well as pursuing life goals, and the poor support or subsidy from policies are all the factors that make these women wouldn’t like to have any child. It means, under the poor situation with less support, women’s willingness to bear children would be deeply affected by the raising cost.
Subjects
低生育率
無意願生育
直接成本
間接成本
生育成本
low fertility
no children
cost of rearing children
direct costs
opportunity costs
single woman
Type
thesis
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