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Young people are
self-confident and independent: poll
By Loa Iok-sin / Staff reporter
Although the public has the impression that most young people nowadays are not
strong enough and are too dependent, a survey by the Taiwan Grassroots
Foundation found the nation¡¦s youth to be strong, independent and confident,
despite adverse socioeconomic conditions and a lack of support from government
policies.
¡§Although most people think young people are weak-willed and dependent on their
parents, we¡¦re glad that our survey found otherwise,¡¨ foundation chairwoman Lin
Liang-o (ªL¨}®Z) said at a press conference to release the poll results.
¡§It¡¦s especially exciting to find that, although most of the respondents are
aware that social conditions are horrible, they are still confident about
themselves and their future,¡¨ Lin said.
The survey was conducted among randomly selected people between the ages of 20
and 40 from Jan. 3 to Jan. 20, with more than 1,000 valid samples.
The foundation¡¦s poll center director, Chen Sung-po (³¯ªQ¬f), said that contrary to
popular belief, as many as 73.8 percent of the respondents said they were
economically independent, and among those who said they are economically
independent, 60.6 percent said they gave part of their income to their families.
In addition, while more than 90 percent of the respondents said that they were
employed, about 40 percent of these employees said they planned to start their
own business in the future, Chen said.
¡§When we divide the respondents into different age groups ¡X 20 to 24, 25 to 29,
30 to 34 and 35 to 40 ¡X and ask them whether they feel confident about
themselves and their career perspective, surprisingly, in all age groups, more
than 60 percent of respondents said they were confident about themselves and
their future,¡¨ Chen said.
However, being economically independent and confident does not mean that the
nation¡¦s young people live under promising conditions; in fact, it is just the
opposite, Chen said.
Citing survey results, Chen added that, while 60 percent of the respondents had
expected to receive a salary of at least NT$30,000 (US$1,012) a month in their
first full-time job, only about 50 percent of them actually receive such
salaries.
Facing low wages, as many as 70 percent of the respondents said that they would
still consider a salary under NT$30,000 a month ¡§acceptable,¡¨ Chen said.
In addition, respondents are not confident about the usefulness of what they
learned in school, with only 9.3 percent saying that their educational
background helped them in their jobs.
Asked what they thought was most important at work, 31.8 percent said ¡§foreign
language fluency,¡¨ 27.5 percent answered ¡§personal connections¡¨ and 22.2 percent
said professional certifications.
Interpreting the survey results, Hsing Wu University director of research and
development Chung Chih-ming (Áé§Ó©ú) said he was happy to see the nation¡¦s youth
were self-confident and willing to develop skills to improve their job
performance.
¡§I think we should then turn to the government and ask it to help create a
better environment for young people,¡¨ he added.
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