Relationships between the decline of infant and child mortality and the subsequent reduction of fertility may turn out the most prominent issues in literature of “population transition”. Several possible mechanisms relating infant and child mortality to fertility behavior have been proposed and studied. Among them, the “interval”, “replacement”, and “insurance” effects appear to be the most thoroughly examined. This paper documents the working of these “effects” with statistics from a probabilistic sample of women in Taiwan.

The quality of children has been mostly discussed in as far as it can affect fertility. The sex of children is a particularly important subject in this context. Because a child’s sex is stochastically determined, Ben-Porath and Welch used the household production approach to identify risky decision points. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. One is to simplify the Ben-Porath and Welch’s model. The other is to use KAP data in Taiwan to examine the causes of preferring to have at least one boy and to test in what direction and the degree to which such preference affects fertility.
The results can be summarized as follows: (1)Preferring to have at least one boy is significant in Taiwan, (2)The data support both the assumption of inelastic demand and mild learning, (3)Concerning the dummy variable for the existence of at least one boy preference, it can be shown that the regression coefficients for each of family structure, wife’s education and husband’s occupation were statistically significant at the .01 significance level, and (4)When the impact of “at least one boy preference” on completed family size is concerned, the regression coefficient for the existence of at least one boy preference is positive as expected and also the most significant variable included.

The divorce rate is rapidly getting higher in Taiwan Area recently. This forms a great shock in Taiwan Area where marriage generally kept stable all the time. The new situation brings a certain degree of pressure and even panic to the married couples, and makes unmarried people feeling unreliable of marriage. People do not know how to adjust to the new situation. As one indicator of rapid social change, the higher and higher divorce rates becomes one of currently significant social problems.
This study is to know the degree of the stability of first marriage among married women of childbearing age in Taiwan Area. The data used here is from “A Survey of Practice of Induced Abortion Among Married Women in Taiwan Area. ” The survey collected more than twelve thousand cases’ data. The data about age of first marriage, premarried pregnancy, and way of decision-making in marriage, which are unavailable in governmental fact-books, are analyzed here to know their relationships with marriage continuation and the proportion of remarriage. In our analysis, the proportions of marriage disintegration of subgroups were weighted according to number of years after first marriage, which is related to the degree of danger in marriage disintegration, to get ‘standardized proportions’ as our basic measure. Chi-square test is used to find whether there are statistically significant differences.
As a result, we found that the first marriage is more dangerous for those who got pregnant before engagement or before marriage without engagement, who got married younger than twenty, who got married very late, and who made decision about marriage by themselves. On the contrary, the first marriage tends to be more stable for those who got pregnant firstly after marriage or after engagement, who got married between twenty and twenty-nine, and who made decision about their marriage jointly with parents.

Taiwan is a newly developed and industrialized area, and along with Korea, Brazil, Argentina and a few other countries belongs in a special class of recently industrialized areas. Taiwan has been undergoing large-scale modernization since the early 1950s when the Nationalist government first began to implement land-reform programs and today is one of the showcase newly developed areas in the world. We know from demographic transition theory that fertility is negatively associated with modernization. During the past three decades, fertility in Taiwan has followed this pattern in a most dramatic manner. Studies of childlessness conducted in Western countries have shown also that as the modernizing influences continue, fertility declines, and childlessness increases as it becomes more and more voluntary. Subregions with the highest levels of modernization and the lowest fertility rates should therefore be characterized by the highest levels of childlessness, particularly among younger women; and vice versa. Given the levels of socioeconomic and demographic development in Taiwan and its subregions in the crica-1980 period, as well as its variability among the hsiens and major cities, we would expect to find higher levels of childlessness in the more developed localities, and lower levels in the less developed subareas. This hypothesis is tested with data from the 1980 Census of Population and Housing, General Report, Taiwan－Fukien Area (Republic of China, 1982) and the 1980 Taiwan－Fukien Demographic Fact Book (Republic of China, 1980).

This paper assessed the role of family in affecting contraceptive and reproductive behavior of married couples. The analysis lied in the broad conceptual framework of the “family of obligations, ” which included both kinsmen and non-relatives. It was hypothesized that members of the family of obligations had a significant influence upon the married couple’s way of life including their fertility behavior. The hypothesized model was tested by using survey data collected in Thailand. The results revealed some interventions exerted by the family on the following matters: marriage, family planning practice, fertility, and sex preference for children. It was observed that the patterns of interventions on contraceptive use and fertility appeared to relate closely to life cycle stages. Additional examination of the impact of family interventions upon married couples’ contraceptive practice and actual fertility did not lend support to the hypothesis. Use of contraception was shown to be a direct function of life cycle, implying that practice of family planning was likely to occur when the number of desired family size had been reached. With regard to the influence of family interventions upon fertility, the data indicated that fertility outcomes of married couples affect interventions by the family rather than the reverse.

Based on the data from a nationwide survey of labor force participation conducted in 1985 by the Office of the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan, Republic of China, this project tries to modify Caldwell’s Wealth Flows Theory in order to analyze fertility behavior of married women.
Caldwell’s Wealth Flows Theory indicates that a patriarchal family has a significant effect on fertility. Unless the patriarchal family structure is replaced by a nuclear family system, he claims, fertility levels will remain relatively high in developing countries. However, he does not discuss social factors which may influence the process of change in the family structure and which factors in the patriarchal family may influence fertility. To make up this shortcoming, this paper shows that female educational level, employment patterns, and occupational prestige brings about change in the family structure. This research also indicates that women with higher education and occupational prestige have lower fertility. In addition, it finds that female occupational status is a main factor to bring about change in the family structure.

This paper has reviewed previous research and statistical data concerning urbanization and its relationship to migration in Taiwan during 1900-1985 period. The level of urbanization was very low when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. The low level of industrialization and the difficulty of communication and transportation in the early stage of development may have impeded migration. Beginning in 1953, Taiwan began a series of economic construction plans. Modern industries have been burgeoning in many big cities and their peripherial townships, thus accelerating the urbanization process. The data clearly show that the growth rate of the urban population has been much faster than the rate of change in the proportion that is urban. During the 1920-40 period the population of Taiwan gradually moved from places of early settlement to new city centers or newly developed areas. It is quite clear that the process of metropolitan dispersion has increased with the development of urbanization in Taiwan.
The pattern of city growth was not consistent from period to period. It was reverse U-shaped for the 1950-60 period, upward-wave-shaped for the 1960-70 period, and J-shaped for the 1970-85 period. If a longer period (e.g., 1947-85) was observed, then it became upward-wave-shaped again. It is quite clear that there is no simple relationship between city size and city growth. This relationship is affected by stage of development; it also appears to be affected by duration of observation. Generally, the longer the interval observed, and the later the period analyzed, the more the upward-wave-shape holds for the relationship.
Many scholars maintain that urban growth in developing countries results primarily from the natural increase of urban populations. However, judging from the rapid urban growth in Taiwan during the 1953-85 period, and considering the natural increase contributed by migrants in urban areas, it is likely that rural-urban migration is a more important source of urban growth.

In order to reduce the teenage pregnancies, we investigated the socio-economic characteristics as well as KAP in regard to family planning among 786 teenage mothers with their first births registered in Taipei city in 1978 through household interviews. Significant personal factors like younger age, less education, lack of knowledge of family planning, conservative attitude to use contraception before first delivery and conservative attitude toward premarital pregnancy etc, are examined. Significant others’ factors like parent’s education, family attitude toward premarital pregnancy etc, and situational factors like migration to city, working in factories, restaurants, etc. exposure to premarital sexual contact, use of contraceptives, limited availability of artificial abortion were studied. These factors contribute directly or indirectly to accepting the premarital pregnancy or the pregnancy soon after marriage even during the teenage years. As a result, the teenager became a mother. Some socio-economic and health consequences are reviewed and discussed.

For almost two decades, feminist scholars have been creating a body of research on women and gender that is both interdisciplinary and specific to many fields in the social sciences and humanities. This work has become an international enterprise with many shared concepts and principles, but it also varies among different contexts. This paper will introduce several concepts and approaches that have wide use and utility in feminist scholarship. It will indicate those areas where research has been most extensive, particularly, though not exclusively, drawing on literature published in English. It will then speculate on how the cultural contexts in which the research has been created has shaped the work. Finally, it will provide some examples of the different institutional contexts within which research and teaching on women are being conducted internationally.