The number of applicants for the Maternity Benefit has broken the 7,600,000 barrier in the 64th year of the labor insurance program.

The Maternity Benefit has always been the most popular of all the labor insurance benefits. According to our statistics, up to July this year (2014), more than 7,600,000 applicants have applied for the maternity benefit, and over NT$115.6 billion has been paid out since the launch of the labor insurance program in 1950. It is evident that the maternity benefit has helped countless working class families, and indirectly encouraged the workers to have children, and increased the nation’s labor productivity.
During the early days of the enforcement of the Labor Insurance Act, most women had a midwife come to their home to deliver their child(ren); not many women gave birth in medical facilities. Therefore, the Childbirth Allowance was given at the time of childbirth, and the Maternity Allowance was subsidies for those taking an unpaid leave from work for recovery. It was not until the implementation of the National Health Insurance (hereinafter referred to as the “NHI”) program on March 1, 1995, coupled with the gradual improvements in medical care and public health, that childbirths in medical facilities became more and more prevalent. As a response, the Labor Insurance Act was amended to cancel the Childbirth Allowance part of the maternity benefit for an insured male individual’s wife or an insured female individual who gave birth (including those who miscarried), with childbirth covered by NHI’s medical care benefit instead. From then on, only an insured female individual who gives birth or has a preterm labor is eligible to apply for the maternity benefit.

As regulated by the Labor Insurance Act in the past, to apply for maternity benefit of the labor insurance program, you had to meet the following two conditions: “giving birth or having a preterm labor while you are insured,” and “giving birth after being insured for 280 days or more, or having a preterm labor after being insured for 181 days or more.” In reality, some working women may quit their jobs after being pregnant due to physical limitations. This means that being unemployed and resting at home to wait for the childbirth, they are not covered by the labor insurance at the time of delivery and therefore ineligible to apply for the maternity benefit. Because of this, new application requirements for the maternity benefit were added as further amendments were made to the Labor Insurance Act in January 2009, stipulating that a working woman can apply for her maternity benefit of 30 days' pay based on her average monthly insured salary, if she is confirmed to be pregnant before surrendering her insurance, has been insured for the required number of days, and delivers the child(ren) within one year after the surrender. Further amendments were made on May 28 this year (2014) to increase the benefit from 30 days’ pay to 60 days’, and for those who have twins or multiple births, the amount will be multiplied by the number of children delivered.

Since the inception of the labor insurance, the number of applicants for the maternity benefit has been continuously increasing. The number of applications peaked at over 326,000 in 1994, and the total amount disbursed that year exceeded NT$ 8.24 billion. (See Table 1). But after that, due to the decrease in birth rate, the number of applications declined year by year. There were only 110 thousand applications in 2009 and 100 thousand in 2010, making Taiwan the country with the lowest birth rate in the world at the time. It was not until 2012, the year of the Dragon, that the number of applicants rebounded slightly. To encourage the working class to have children, the Labor Insurance Act has been amended to increase the one-time payment of the maternity benefit to 60 days’ pay this year (2014), and for those who have twins or multiple births, the amount will be multiplied by the number of children delivered, providing dramatically improved security to all workers. For example, if an insured person delivers twins, she can receive 120 days’ pay for her maternity benefit, which can be as much as NT$175,600, depending on individual cases, and is NT$131,700 more compared with the NT$43,900 before the amendment. Moreover, from its launch on May 1, 2009 to July 2014, the allowance for unpaid parental leave has benefited over 257,000 workers, with over NT$22.66 billion paid out. Taking the insured persons who applied for the allowance for unpaid parental leave in July 2014 for example, each applicant may receive approximately NT$18,000 per month and for 5.2 months on average, which means each applicant can receive about NT$93,000. This shows that the program is giving workers a peace of mind so they can raise their children at ease.

Table 1 

The Number of Applications for the Maternity Benefit and the Amount Disbursed Each Year