臺灣年輕女性不懼當“剩女”

        With one of the world's lowest birth rates, Taiwan faces the prospect of a rapidly aging population without a young workforce to support it. The government is scrambling for solutions, with experts pushing measures such as workplace day care, tax breaks for parents and generous maternity leave. But for a generation of Taiwanese women who embraced higher education (more women than men have college degrees) and demanding careers, the age-old stigma of being unmarried has given way to a celebration of single life that government incentives won't easily overturn.

　　臺灣的人口出生率居全世界最低行列，正面臨人口的快速老齡化，缺乏年輕的勞動力來支撐社會發(fā)展。政府想方設法尋求解決方案，專家紛紛出招，如在工作場所設立托兒所、給有小孩的家庭減稅，以及延長產假等。然而，對學歷更高（現在大學學歷的臺灣女性比男性多）、更注重事業(yè)發(fā)展的新一代臺灣女性來說，長期以來對大齡“剩女”的指指點點已經被坦然接受單身生活的潮流所取代，政府的鼓勵措施無法輕易扭轉這一趨勢。

　　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.)

　　政府官員還在打愛國主義牌，提倡把孩子視為“公共財產”。臺灣內政部入出國及移民署(National Immigration Agency)代理副署長胡景富說，父母生孩子不光是為自己，還是為臺灣；但這種花言巧語似乎很難在臺灣人權衡是否生孩子的問題時成為一種砝碼。此外，有大學學歷的臺灣女性的平均結婚年齡為32歲，也就是說她們的生育適齡期相對縮短。（相比之下，截止到2008年，有大學學歷的日本女性的平均結婚年齡為28.5歲。）

　　Some unattached female 30-somethings refer to themselves, half-joking, as 'loser dogs,' after a 2004 Japanese book on the same phenomenon in that country. In Taiwan, their spending power hasn't gone unnoticed: A real-estate company recently advertised a small, ritzy apartment as ideal for 'loser dogs.' This economic muscle is part of what gives women the freedom to embrace the single life.

　　30歲以上的未婚女性半開玩笑地稱自己是“敗犬”，這個名字來源于2004年日本出版的一本講述同一現象的書。在臺灣，該群體的消費能力并沒有被忽視。一家房地產公司最近在給一種小戶型豪華公寓打廣告，稱其專門為“敗犬族”量身定做。這種經濟能力也是女性可以自由選擇單身生活的原因之一。