64 PERSPECTIVES ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS | VOL 43 | 2025 To effectively increase the birth rate, societal attitudes toward marriage must change. Women’s views have liberalized significantly over the past 20 years, but those of men lag (Cheng & Yang, 2021). Allowing women to have marriages that fit their desired personal and professional lives may improve the propensity to marry and start families. Changing social traditions is challenging, but beginning with youth is a first step. A multifaceted approach that both educates and models progressive norms is key. First, Taiwan could display liberal views of marriage across the curriculum through children’s books and media that show a variety of households, including those with same-sex or single parents, working mothers, or stay-at-home fathers. Next, increasing emotional literacy education for young boys could teach them to better understand their feelings, express vulnerability and empathy, and develop support skills—all of which help long term when building relationships and families. Patriarchal social norms must be addressed to restructure men’s expectations of wives and mothers. Male-targeted television programming could feature progressive relationships where women are the primary wage earners. Normalizing these dynamics through popular media can model new behaviors, reframing marriage as a mutually beneficial rather than as a restrictive arrangement. Women need to be recognized for their successes, while offered options that break down the binary notion of being either a professional or a mother—showing that both are possible. One way to promote this reframing could be through the development of grants rewarding women who make social media content about what it is like to be a working mom. Modeling positive experiences through media can encourage women to balance motherhood and professional life and build community among career-focused women, single or married, to provide a support network for those interested in motherhood. Taiwan should alter its approach to consider the social influences behind marriage and family planning. If it can enact related initiatives, there is hope the Ministry of Education could help increase women’s willingness to marry while reducing social stigma surrounding working mothers and single parents. However, meaningful social change requires time and coordinated efforts across multiple sectors, not just education policy. Increasing access to assisted reproductive technology With Taiwan’s population and birth rate continuing to decline, it is essential to guarantee that families who want children have ample opportunities to do so. Assisted reproduction policies are in place for heterosexual marriages, but current regulations are burdensome. These regulations are roadblocks in an already challenging journey. To increase options for child-rearing, it is imperative to liberalize policies that would allow for reproductive strategies for same-sex couples, single people, and those interested in surrogacy, while making assisted reproduction more accessible overall. In July 2021, the government implemented subsidies for infertile couples seeking assisted reproductive technology (Chen et al., 2025), which cover up to NT$100,000 (~US$3000) for the first round of treatment and NT$60,000 (~US$1800) for all following rounds. They extend up to six rounds of treatments for women under age 39 and three rounds of treatment for those 40–44. These programs enhance incentives for fertility treatments and the eventual birth of children but still cover only 45%–62% of total treatment costs (Lee, 2025). Taiwan will realize long-run economic gains much larger than its initial investment in the fertility subsidies through more of the population contributing to the GDP and paying taxes. Based on lifetime gross tax revenues, predicted financial returns are 21.8 times the initial subsidy investment. According to recent data, there was a 31.5% increase in IVF cycles following the implementation of this government subsidy (Chen et al., 2025), emphasizing that people are interested in IVF treatments but that they might just need better social or financial support. Expanding the subsidy program to cover the full cost of IVF for at least the first three rounds of treatment would create benefits not only from a declining population perspective but also from a financial perspective long term. Though the subsidy sounds promising, it still only covers heterosexual couples, leaving a large gap when it comes to same-sex couples, single people, or those interested in using a surrogate. In the Legislative Yuan, talks about IVF have been prevalent as of late. Recently, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has prioritized the availability of IVF for single women and lesbian couples, while the Taiwan People’s Party proposed legislation allowing surrogacy for heterosexual and homosexual couples (Rother, 2025). Even the conservative Kuomintang submitted a proposal to allow surrogacy but restricted it to heterosexual couples. The DPP has won the presidential election for three consecutive terms but in 2025 holds one less seat in the legislative branch than the Kuomintang, making swift legislative action difficult (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2025b). Fur-
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