Government officials also are playing the patriotism card, proposing that children should be seen as a 'public asset.' Peter Hu, director of the National Immigration Agency, says parents create children not just for themselves, but for Taiwan. Such rhetoric seems unlikely to sway Taiwanese weighing the pros and cons of parenting. What's more, those college-educated women who do marry now don't do so until they're 32 on average, meaning their biological window to reproduce is relatively short. (By comparison, the average marrying age in Japan for women of all educational levels was 28.5 as of 2008.)

政府官员还在打爱国主义牌，提倡把孩子视为“公共财产”。台湾内政部入出国及移民署(National Immigration Agency)代理副署长胡景富说，父母生孩子不光是为自己，还是为台湾；但这种花言巧语似乎很难在台湾人权衡是否生孩子的问题时成为一种砝码。此外，有大学学历的台湾女性的平均结婚年龄为32岁，也就是说她们的生育适龄期相对缩短。（相比之下，截止到2008年，有大学学历的日本女性的平均结婚年龄为28.5岁。）