Super-aged Taiwan hopes to seize billion dollar silver dividend with smart care

Taiwan’s Long-Term Care 3.0 redefines aging with tech-driven, community-based solutions for a super-aged future.

When a country enters “super-aged” status—defined by the WHO as having over 20% of its population aged 65 or older, it confronts a fundamentally new set of social, economic, and healthcare challenges. In 2025, Taiwan joins this category, propelled by increased longevity and persistently low fertility rates, placing it alongside nations like Japan and parts of Europe.

The demographic shift raises urgent questions about how to maintain the dignity, independence, and quality of life of older adults, while safeguarding the sustainability of the healthcare system. With fewer working-age citizens to support a growing elderly population, the pressure on public resources and infrastructure is intensifying.

In response, Taiwan has introduced Long-Term Care 3.0, a ten-year strategic framework that expands upon the foundation of Long-Term Care 2.0, initiated in 2017. This new phase emphasizes medical integration, community-based support, and smart technology to fundamentally reshape how aging is managed.

The policy aims not only to expand services but to redesign the structure of elder care itself—moving from institutional models to decentralized, locally embedded systems. It seeks to empower families and communities while lightening the load on hospitals and care facilities.

Beyond social policy, the initiative also carries economic weight. Taiwan’s “silver economy” and long-term care market is projected to reach NT$3.6 trillion (US$120 billion) in 2025, according to President Lai Ching-te (賴清德).

This positions aging not only as a challenge, but as a potential growth engine for innovation, employment, and public-private collaboration. For policymakers, it represents both a necessity and an opportunity to future-proof Taiwan’s social fabric.

Policy response

The statistics underscore the urgency. As of mid-2025, 19.64 percent of Taiwan’s population—approximately 4.57 million people—were over the age of 65. By the end of the year, that figure will surpass 20 percent, officially making Taiwan a super-aged society.

Looking ahead, the National Development Council projects that three in ten Taiwanese will be elderly within the next decade. This demographic shift places immense pressure on Taiwan’s healthcare, social services, and economic systems.

During the Long-Term Care 2.0 era, the government demonstrated its ability to scale infrastructure quickly. The number of care facilities expanded twentyfold to nearly 15,000, and the workforce quadrupled to 100,000.

Waiting times for services dropped dramatically, from nearly two months to just four days. Public satisfaction with care remained consistently high, hovering around 90 percent.

Funding for the program also surged, increasing nearly nineteenfold to NT$92.6 billion. These achievements established a strong foundation, but they are not sufficient for what lies ahead.

The gains of 2.0, while significant, merely delayed a larger reckoning. As more seniors live alone and chronic conditions like dementia grow more prevalent, Taiwan’s care system must shift from reactive services to proactive, integrated support.

This next phase must also capitalize on Taiwan’s strengths in smart technology. By embedding predictive tools and digital infrastructure into elder care, the country can move toward a model that anticipates need rather than responds to crisis.


3.0 Vision

As the Executive Yuan outlines, Long-Term Care 3.0 is anchored in three core principles: healthy aging, aging in place, and dignified end-of-life care. The plan is designed to roll out in phased stages, each addressing key gaps in Taiwan’s existing elder care system.

Phase I (September 2025) introduces support measures for families employing foreign caregivers—long central to Taiwan’s elder care model. These families will gain access to community-based services such as respite care and adult day-care, alongside expanded transport subsidies and improved nutritional support. Respite services will also extend to public spaces like courtyards and parks, promoting both caregiver relief and senior social interaction.

Phase II (January 2026) broadens eligibility to include younger-onset dementia patients and post-acute cases. This reflects a growing recognition of early cognitive decline and stroke recovery needs among Taiwan’s middle-aged population.

Phase III (July 2026) launches a leasing system for smart assistive devices, supported by substantial public subsidies. Technologies such as robotic walkers and AI-powered monitoring systems aim to preserve independence, reduce accidents, and ease the caregiving burden on families.

Beyond these phases, the government has articulated eight strategic pillars to support system-wide transformation. These include: strengthening preventive health, integrating hospitals with community care, expanding institutional capacity, improving post-disability rehabilitation, supporting families, investing in smart care technologies, encouraging advance care planning, and bolstering the care workforce through improved labor conditions and foreign recruitment.

The Market Dimension

While the ethos of Long-Term Care 3.0 is rooted in humanitarian values, its economic implications are far-reaching. By integrating smart care technologies—from fall-detection IoT sensors to cloud-based platforms for medical data—Taiwan is positioning itself to capture a significant share of the trillion-NTD silver economy.

Public subsidies are accelerating this shift, attracting tech firms, startups, and social enterprises focused on telehealth, robotics, and personalized nutrition. The alignment between social policy and industrial development is deliberate, reflecting a broader strategy to turn care into an engine of economic growth.

Government officials openly acknowledge this dual objective. Legislator Su Chiao-hui noted that Taiwan’s long-term care budget has expanded from NT$5 billion in 2017 to NT$90 billion, while the number of people served has increased 8.4 times.

Taiwan’s established strengths in semiconductors and hardware manufacturing further enhance its capacity to meet rising domestic and international demand. In this context, Long-Term Care 3.0 is not only a social infrastructure initiative—it is also a platform for sustainable innovation and global relevance.

Global Resonance

Internationally, Taiwan’s Long-Term Care 3.0 will be closely watched by policymakers, scholars, and industry leaders for its potential replicability. Aging is a global phenomenon: by 2050, one in six people worldwide will be over the age of 65, according to the United Nations.

What sets Taiwan apart is its combination of universal National Health Insurance, robust community-level social services, and rapid adoption of smart technologies. If successful, the initiative could offer a scalable model for mid-sized developed economies grappling with demographic decline and the need to sustain economic vitality.

Countries like Japan and South Korea provide both cautionary and instructive parallels. In Japan, nearly one-third of the population is already over 65, the highest among advanced economies, while South Korea, having crossed the 20 percent threshold in late 2024, is projected to approach 30 percent elderly by 2035.

Taiwan shares these structural challenges but brings a distinctive toolkit to the table. Its integrated health infrastructure and growing ecosystem of smart care technologies may offer a calibrated blend of social compassion and economic innovation—one that other aging societies can adapt to their own needs.


Opportunities

The road ahead is undeniably complex. Taiwan must contend with persistent challenges such as recruiting and retaining sufficient caregivers, bridging disparities between urban and rural access, and guarding against the commodification of elder care.

Yet the ambition behind Long-Term Care 3.0 is clear—to integrate dignity, technology, and community into a resilient and humane care infrastructure. It is both a defense against demographic pressure and a strategic bet on a trillion-NTD silver economy.

More than a response to aging, it is a reimagining of what aging can mean. If Taiwan succeeds, it may offer not just a care model, but a vision of aging as a phase of renewal, not decline.