The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), Executive Yuan, has been authorized to gather the data on all social aspects in order to publish the “Social Indicators Yearbook” since 1979, which was adopted from the framework of “the System of Social and Demographic Statistics, SSDS” released by the United Nations, providing the comprehensive social indicator statistics. Since 2006, the yearbook has been revised to contain analyses of social issues as well as data providing, and based on the “Frameworks for Social Indicators” released by DGBAS, which introduces the criteria for indicator selection and the relevance among indicators. The yearbook covers nine main subjects: population, family, health, education and research, employment, income and expenditure, housing and living environment, public safety, and culture and leisure, and three supplemental subjects: transportation and communications, social security, and social participation.
In recent years, concerns have been emerging on the development of comprehensive indicators to measure people’s well-being and social progress. The National Well-being Indicators (NWI) in the R.O.C (Taiwan) were initiated in 2012 and first released in August 2013. Hence, the yearbook was then revised as a special issue of National Well-being Indicators, while the statistics tables of social indicators in the previous yearbooks were retained. Owing to the national well-being indicators including social and economic aspects can serve as a window of social indicators, the Social Indicators Yearbook has been replaced by National Well-being Indicators Yearbook from 2014. However, the statistical tables of previous Social Indicators Yearbook are continuing to be updated in electronic format on the website.
After discreetly reviewing the orientation and necessity of social statistics, the release of composite NWI and ranks of R.O.C (Taiwan) was suspended from 2017. However, as essential ways to observe the well-being of people, the updated well-being indicators will continue to be displayed collectively on this web site.
In addition, it has become a universal value pursued by countries across the world to strengthen the social protection system and provide people with better protection of basic need. Currently, social welfare has been an important policy of the nation and an issue of concern to the public. DGBAS has compiled social protection expenditure annually since 2017, according to the SSI manuals of ILO, and added data of each year retroactively since 2000.
Social protection expenditure by types of social protection schemes are classified into “social insurance schemes” and “social assistance”, totally 2 groups. Total expenditure is dominated by social benefits and the rest includes administration costs and other expenditures. Social benefits can be classified by functions into old-age, invalidity/disability, survivors, sickness and health, maternity, family and children, unemployment, employment injury and occupational disease, housing, as well as other income support and assistance, totally 10 functions. Statistics of social protection exhibit the overall allocation of social security resources in Taiwan, which can be used for inventory and consolidation of social welfare expenditures at all levels of government to implement the zero-based budgeting system and strengthen the efficiency of budget making, as a reference for policy evaluation and for all social groups.
Directorate-General of Budget,
Accounting and Statistics
Executive Yuan