Taiwan has crossed a demographic threshold. For the first time, more than 20% of its population is aged 65 or over, officially classifying the island as a “super-aged” society under United Nations criteria, reported Focus Taiwan.
According to government figures released on Friday, 4.67m people in Taiwan were aged 65 or above last year, accounting for 20.06% of the population of just over 23m. The designation reflects both rapid ageing and a shrinking population—one of the island’s most pressing long-term challenges.
The UN defines a society as “ageing” once people aged 65 and over exceed 7% of the population, and “super-aged” when the share reaches 20%. Taiwan has now joined a small but growing group of economies in that category. Switzerland is close behind: according to 2024 data from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, roughly 19.6% of its population is already over 65. Some forecasts predict it will “super-aged” in 2026. By 2040 the population could be deeply “super-aged” with between 25% and 26% of the population aged over 64.
In Taiwan, ageing has been accompanied by a sharp decline in births. Children aged 14 or under made up just 11.5% of Taiwan’s population last year. Only 9,027 babies were born in December, a fall of 27% compared with a year earlier. Total births for 2025 dropped to a record low of 107,812. The crude birth rate fell to 4.56 births per 1,000 people.
Taiwan’s population began to shrink in 2020, and its fertility rate has been declining steadily for two decades. Demographers cite later marriage, smaller family sizes and a rising share of people choosing not to marry at all. High living costs and limited childcare support have also led many working women to postpone or abandon plans for motherhood.
In response, the government last month proposed expanding access to medically assisted reproduction to single women and married female couples, in an effort to slow the demographic slide. Whether such measures will be enough to counter powerful social and economic forces remains uncertain.
More on this:
UN article on ageing (in English)
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