Op-Ed: Will the Government Open Accounts for Children, and Will Courts Open Trials for Them?

On a certain day in 2044, an 18-year-old youth walks into a bank. The clerk smiles and hands over a passbook: 'Congratulations, you can now withdraw from your future account.'

Before the youth can celebrate, his parents start arguing.

'This money is compensation for the eighteen years we spent raising you. It should be used to support the household.'

'This is my future fund from the government. I want to save it for starting a business or further education.'

What if the parents are already divorced? What if custody has changed? What if the child becomes a target for fraud gangs? What if, after adulthood, the youth clashes with parents over how to use the funds—ending up in court?

Today, the legislature is busy opening accounts for children. Perhaps in twenty years, courts will be busy adjudicating cases for them.

This is not alarmist rhetoric. It’s a systemic risk that any mature public policy should assess in advance.

Yet, public discussion has almost entirely focused on 'Is 60,000 per year enough?' and 'Is 200 billion worth it?'—rarely asking whether this policy solves low birthrate or creates a new governance challenge.

The deeper irony is that it got the question wrong from the start.

The real problem of low birthrate policy is 'no one wants to have children.' But the 'Child Growth and Future Account Act' addresses 'how already-born children accumulate assets.'

It’s like a doctor diagnosing pneumonia but prescribing reading glasses. The glasses aren’t useless—but they’re not the treatment the patient needs most.

Under current design, the government will deposit 60,000 annually for every child under 18. The first-year expenditure is estimated at 216.2 billion, with children aged 12–17 accounting for about 7 billion. Newborns this year, however, receive only about 12 billion.

They claim to boost birthrate, yet most of the budget goes to people whose reproductive decisions are already made.

Young couples still hesitating about marriage, first or second children, continue to face high housing prices, long working hours, low wages, insufficient childcare, and career interruptions for women.

Apparently, in Taiwan, 'low birthrate policy' doesn’t need to target low birthrate.

This reflects the most alarming trend in Taiwan’s public governance: the misalignment of goals and tools.

Low birthrate is a population policy; child accounts are, at their core, asset accumulation and social welfare policies. They can coexist, but not be conflated just because both involve children.

More troubling, this isn’t an isolated case—it’s becoming a governance culture.

In recent years, Taiwan’s public policy seems to follow a fixed pattern: low youth wages? Issue subsidies. Poor economy? Distribute cash. Low birthrate? Deposit money. Election approaching? Propose a bigger welfare package.

Whether a policy truly solves problems is increasingly secondary. Whether people 'feel it,' whether it’s easy to promote, and whether it benefits a large population are becoming key design criteria. As a result, public policy is shifting from problem-solving to public opinion management, from governing the nation to managing votes.

Do politicians not know the causes of low birthrate? They do. But reforming the housing market might anger developers; labor reform could increase business costs; expanding public childcare requires long-term fiscal commitment; creating family-friendly workplaces involves cross-ministerial reforms.

In contrast, announcing '60,000 per year' is easy to understand, easy to promote, and easy to make voters feel something.

Reform is slow. Cash is fast. So, the hardest institutional reforms aren’t done, while the easiest policies to gain applause are implemented first.

The world has already provided answers.

France, Sweden, and other Nordic countries long established public childcare, parental leave, flexible hours, and family support systems, maintaining relatively high birthrates for a time—but they’ve declined recently. Singapore offers baby bonuses, housing subsidies, and tax incentives, yet birthrates remain low. South Korea has spent massive budgets on pro-natal policies for over two decades, yet now has one of the world’s lowest birthrates. Hungary used home purchase subsidies and income tax reductions to briefly improve rates, but couldn’t reverse aging.

These countries’ shared experience shows one thing: no amount of subsidies can replace a system that makes people feel safe having children.

What young people truly fear today isn’t whether their child will have a first pot of gold—but whether they can still afford their mortgage after the first child is born, whether they can get a childcare slot, or whether their job will still exist after parental leave.

What truly blocks childbirth is not the number in a bank account, but uncertainty about the future.

Moreover, this policy may leave another hidden cost.

When an account accumulates over a million after eighteen years, it won’t just be a passbook—it could become a new center of family power.

Who manages it? Who decides its use? Can parents demand the child pay household expenses? How is it handled in divorced families? Will adult children refusing to withdraw trigger family conflicts? Will fraud gangs target it as a new crime opportunity?

Today’s legislative debate focuses on how to deposit money—but almost no one discusses how to prevent future family disputes, custody battles, property control issues, or court cases.

These are governance costs public policy must bear.

Democracy needs welfare—but it needs governance even more.

A truly mature government shouldn’t just announce how much money it will distribute each year. It should publish concrete performance indicators: total fertility rate, average age of first childbirth, proportion of multi-child families, child poverty rate, household income improvement—so the public knows what 200 billion actually buys.

Otherwise, today’s deposits may become tomorrow’s debts. Today’s applause may accumulate into future disappointment.

Most worrying is that political parties now compete not on who governs best, but on who designs the most desirable check for voters.

When public policy packages reform as subsidies, manages public opinion with cash, and chooses tools based on votes, what’s being depleted isn’t just 200 billion annually—it’s the nation’s governance capacity.

After all, the population crisis isn’t just about declining birthrates. It affects labor supply, industrial competitiveness, fiscal sustainability, national defense mobilization, and the country’s entire future.

Sixty thousand might raise a passbook. Two hundred billion might raise a welfare program.

But a nation that treats political propaganda as policy and welfare competition as governance will never raise the confidence to bring the next generation into society!

*Author is a Ph.D. in Management