少子化與高齡化下的臺灣人口預測與經濟分析

BASELINE FORECASTING FOR TAIWAN’S POPULATION IN THE FACE OF LOWFERTILITY RATE AND AGEING PROBLEMS

臺灣近年由於晚婚、不婚、晚育、少育，甚至不育的現象持續發展，加以平均餘命的延長，少子化及人口高齡化也成為大家關切的議題。本文建構GEMTEE動態可計算一般均衡模型，考量人口模組與總體經濟模組交互回饋影響，生育率、死亡率等為內生決定， 進行2012 至2060 年臺灣人口的基線預測，並與行政院經濟建設委員會（2012）預測進行比較分析，結果顯示， GEMTEE推估未來總人口減少趨勢比經建會更為嚴重， 預估2060 年我國總人口數為1，478.8 萬人， 約減少814.2 萬人。整體而言， 在考量經濟因素之下， 預期未來因為人口結構改變使得少子化與高齡化問題更為加劇， 且使得人口結構快速改變， 未來面臨更為嚴重的老幼照顧問題。

Over the past few decades, the population growth of Taiwan has been decreasing, particularly with the increasing situations of late-marriage, no-marriage, late-childbearing, few-childbearing and even no-childbearing ever since the 1980s. The low fertility rate and ageing population have put demographic policies as the top of the agenda for Taiwan’s sustainable economic growth. In this study,we use theGEMTEEmodel – a computable general equilibriummodel with both investment and demographic dynamics – to provide baseline forecasting for Taiwan’s population and investigate its potential economic impacts. We also compare our results with predictions from Council of Economic Planning andDevelopment (CEPD)where Cohort-ComponentMethod (CCM) is used and all economic factors are set exogenously. Other things being equal, our results show that Taiwan’s population will decrease to 14.79million in 2060. Such a result ismore severe than that predicted by CEPD. Interdependency and feedbacks between demographic transition and economic factors, especially the labor force declining and income growth, bring into focus the importance of the problems of lowfertility rate and ageing population in Taiwan.