New office in push for more babies set up in Taiwan

An office to encourage parents to have more children was set up in Taiwan Wednesday by the health and welfare authority.

The family planning office will work with families to lift the island's fertility rate to a reasonable level.

Taiwan's fertility rate has remained around 1.1 since 2005, far below the replacement rate of 2.1 to maintain a stable population. It even plunged to 0.89 in 2010, the world's lowest that year.

This year, the number of residents aged 65 or above surpassed the number of those aged 14 or below for the first time since records began on the island.

To encourage Taiwanese to have larger families, the authority will review and update current policies and incentives for child care subsidies and medicare support in the next two weeks and aims to publish a new plan in June. Endi