Like most Western industrialized countries, Taiwan experienced a sustained decline in fertility rates and increased life expectancy that together resulted in population ageing. But due to the fast fertility decline in recent decades, the pace of aging has been continuously accelerating — Taiwan became an “ageing society” in 1993, an “aged society” in 2018, and will become a “super-aged” society in 2025.
In Taiwan, the total fertility rate (TFR) — which measures the number of children born per woman during her lifetime — sharply declined from seven births in 1951 to 0.975 births in 2021. Meanwhile, the share of the population aged above 65 increased from 2.5% in the 1950s to 17.56% in 2021. According to the Ministry of the Interior, life expectancy at birth increased from 53.4 years for males and 56.3 years for females in 1951 to 77.7 years and 84.3 years in 2021 correspondingly.
