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。）