Taiwan’s Shrinking Population (2025) – S5-E1

Did you know that former Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文 is the
youngest of eleven siblings? Her personal story is a dramatic
example of how quickly we’ve fallen from high fertility in the
1950s, when the rate was over six children per woman, to the
current birthrate of about one. That’s half of what’s needed to
maintain a population. Eryk and John discuss Taiwan’s dramatic
demographic changes and explore possible solutions. This is
an important subject, an existential threat for Taiwan, which is
why we chose it to kick off Season Five of Formosa Files.