This study describes the population changes in marital status during this century, by analyzing each census result conducted during the time of Japanese occupation and after the war in Taiwan. Taking the age specific statistics, which include sex ratio, proportion of the ever married, the widowed, and the divorced, as well as rates of divorce and remarriage, this study presents the marriage patterns in terms of formation, dissolution and reformation in Taiwan of this century.

No English abstract available.

No English abstract available.

As a result of sharp fertility decline, the aging of the Taiwan population has proceeded rapidly and is likely to continue in full force in the future.
Conventionally, the family, especially married adult children, has been thought as the best source of support for the elderly in Taiwan. However, an aging population reduces the child availability of the elderly and the possibility of three-generational co-residence. In this paper we employ family status life tables to assess the effects of demographic processes on family composition and to reveal trends in elderly living arrangement. We found that further declining fertility and changing nuptiality are responsible for the prevalence of nuc1ear family composition. Increasing proportion of nuc1ear families indicates a decreasing probability for the elderly parents living with their married children. In addition, according to the current nuptiality trends, the increasing proportion of women of all ages who remain at never-married status will strengthen its effects on family composition in the near future.
While our social welfare po1icy f or the elderly just focuses on how to reduce the economic burden of young cohort on elderly caring, this paper suggests that we have to be aware of the dwindling expected years of adult life with responsibility (i.e.caring young children and old parents in the family) due to the further decline of fertility, and re-evaluate the absolute economic burden of young cohort if the magnified economic burden on elderly caring could be offset by lessening childcaring.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: First is to investigate the key features which characterize the patterns of growth and distribution of health resources based on a 1971-1988 longitudinal data set; Second, to consider the above-mentioned patterns as consequences of the interaction among governmental health policies, insurance payment scheme, and the existed hierarchy of health industry, and to examine how such institutional forces constitute an opportunity structure to influence behavior of hospitals and individual physicians.
An analysis of the annual growth rates and average growth rates for medical doctor, hospital, private hospital, clinic, private clinic, hospital bed, and private hospital bed, reveals that the number of hospitals as a whole increase much faster than that of clinics, especially private clinics, to indicate a trend of bureaucratization in provision of health care. Hospitals by average become larger in terms of the number of beds as suggested by the fact that average growth rate for hospital beds is much larger than that for hospitals. Concerning the degree of dispersion, medical doctors are most unevenly distributed among regions as compared to other types of health resources, and have a trend of concentration over time.
Hospitals and hospital beds are more dispersed and have a trend of dispersion, while clinics are in between in terms of degree of dispersion in 1988, however, clinics used to be least concentrated in 1971 and turned out to be much more unevenly distributed in 1988.
This paper then indicates the inadequacy of "demand-supply model" in explaining the trend of growth and distribution of health resources in Taiwan. We argue that behavior of hospitals and health professionals are constrained to a large extent by the institutional environment of which they are in existance. Specifically, large scale hospitals benefit more from their niches in the health industry hierarchy under the operation of the health insurance payment schemes and governmental regionalization policy.
The payment scheme also gave hospitals of various scales more incentive to expand. Medical doctors and private clinics were trapped into a chain effect of "medical schools, teaching hospitals, physician manpower, and clinics". Lack of rural experience due to personal background of medical students, contents of medical training, and an emphasis on specialty expertise leads to junior medical doctors practising at a higher cost at the rural areas, and thus consequently a more unevenly distributed trend over time for medical doctors and clinics is observed.

As other developing countries, the industrial development in Taiwan seems to marginalize female workers. This study tried to examine the trend of women`s employment status, using both macro- and micro-level data. The statistics suggests that female employment had significantly declined during the early states of industrialization. Although the rapid economic development has expanded women’s job opportunities, most women concentrated in lower-status jobs and informal sector. Informal employment is especially prevalent among married women.
On the micro-level analysis the study examined the factors which led to the marginalization of women’s labor force. The empirical analysis applied a multinomial logistic model on 1980 KAP survey sample of 3859 married women. The results suggested that married women’s work patterns in terms of formal vs. informal employment are determined by the family organization rather than labor market conditions. Wives from families with small business are more likely to be involved in informal employment.
Wives also tend to work informally when they have young children. On the other hand, the effects of labor market conditions are mediated by the types of family economy. Therefore the women’s informal employment in Taiwan, as a characteristic of female marginalization, is the result of the sexual division of labor in the family organization and the prevalence of the family business, rather than that of being excluded into the marginal forms of employment through the process of capitalistic production, as argued by the female marginalization theorists.

No English abstract available.