The island-wide family planning programme in Taiwan: Analysis of the accomplishments of the past eight years

Abstract

Taiwan's island-wide family planning programme is the showcase of similar programmes in the developing world. In the past eight years, between 1964 and 1971, a cumulative total of 935,000 married women accepted the Lippes loop, 236,000 accepted the pill, and 116,000 couples accepted condoms. The prevalence rates of loop and pill users at the end of 1971 are estimated at 18·7 per cent and 3–6 per cent respectively. The programme had been recruiting more younger women of lower parity to practise family planning which is desirable, but a fact of concern is that a large proportion of the acceptors had had at least one son, and had accepted the methods to stop, rather than to space births. The ‘life expectancy’ of loop and pill, the two major contraceptives recommended in the programme, have been shorter than expected, 31·4 months without and 49·9 months with re-insertion for the loop, and only 10·5 months without re-taking for the pill. The concepts of ‘half-life (retention)’ and ‘half-life (impact)’, developed by the author, were applied in the analysis to obtain the values of 18·6 months and 25·7 months respectively for the loop, and 5·8 months and 9·2 months respectively for the pill all for the first segment. Only nine per cent of the total current loop wearers were aged 40–44 in 1964, but the proportion had increased substantially, to 20·5 per cent, in 1971. This ‘ageing’ of current users tends to minimize the demographic impact of the programme which is a factor of concern. Methods to overcome this and other problems should be explored for the final success of the programme.

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L. P. Chow

The author is deeply grateful to the former staff of the Taiwan Population Studies Center, whose unfailing efforts laid the foundation for a successful programme; its accomplishments are presented in this article.