Taiwan health worker Ma Pei-ching thought she had a tough job 20 years ago, going door-to-door handing out condoms and teaching couples about contraception.

　　"We used to worry we would run out of food and space if the population continued to grow," said Ma, a veteran of Taiwan's Bureau of Health Promotion.

　　"My job was to tell people to have no more than two children at a time when having four or five was considered normal. It was hard," Ma said.

　　How things have changed. Taiwan's birth rate plunged to a record low last year and Ma today is part of a three-year government campaign to encourage bigger families, hoping to ward off welfare strains on a rapidly greying population.

　　"The younger generation sees things with a different perspective from their parents. They want careers, they want freedom and they want independence. What they don't want is family and the responsibility of raising children," said Ma.

　　"Telling them to have more children is more difficult than telling their parents to have fewer," she said.

　　Taiwan's fertility rate has plunged with the average woman having only 1.2 children, down from 2.5 in the 1980s, official statistics show.

　　Taiwan's birth rate is only slightly above that of other more mature economies such as Hong Kong and Macau with just 0.9 children. A "replacement" level of 2.1 children per family is needed to maintain a stable population, analysts say.

　　"My parents and people around me have been telling me to get married and have children for more than 10 years, as if I'm an incomplete person without them," said Julia Lee, a 40-year-old advertising executive.

　　"There are too many things I want to do and I don't have time to be a wife or mother," Lee said. "I am happy with who I am now."

　　Lee's view reflects that of the younger generation of affluent, better-educated people in Taiwan who no longer consider offspring a necessity, a stark contrast to their parents who subscribe to the Confucian ideal of a big family to pass on the lineage and the belief that more children will bring prosperity.

　　A recent opinion poll commissioned by the government found 45 percent of people between the age of 20 and 39 are single, of whom 38 percent said they were not interested in marriage at all.

　　If the low birth rate continues, Taiwan's population of 23 million will start to contract by 2022, said local economic planning and development authority.

　　The number of people aged over 65 is expected to balloon to nearly 7 million in 2051, more than triple the current 2 million, said the authority.

　　At least 85 percent of married couples need to have more than 2 children to prevent the situation from worsening, it added.

　　(Reuters)