The relation between economic development and the allocation of household resources for education among siblings has been widely discussed. The experience of Taiwan in the post-World War II period is particularly instructive because of rapid growth in economic opportunities, concomitant declines in fertility, and traditionally patriarchal familial organization.
Based on data from three island-wide surveys, we find that the growing economy coincided with improvements in education for children regardless of sex and that the gender gap in educational attainment declined.

Recently, according to information from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance database, the medical expenditure on critical illness and injury has increased significantly because of an aging population. In this paper we are interested in investigating the impact of the aging population on the cost of critical illness and injury. In the first part of this research, we make use of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance database from 1996 to 2001 to estimate the number of people suffering critical illness and injury. In particular, we apply actuarial methods and the method of cohort component to estimate outpatient medical expenditure of the critical illness and injury. The estimation shows that the projection of medical expenditure due to critical illness and injury grows linearly with time. This effect is consistent with the trend of an increase of numbers in elderly. It implies that an aging population will lead to a significant financial impact on Taiwan’s national health insurance program. Furthermore, in the second part of this research, we construct a Markov model to calculate the expected premiums of critical illness and injury insurance under both social and commercial insurance systems. We then evaluate the required cost of critical illness and injuries in order to keep a financial balance for the Taiwan National Health Insurance program.

Structural mobility is always the key issue in the literature on social mobility. In the past 20 years, doubts were raised about research on structural mobility but these have been relieved due to the progress in statistical methodology. Using data from the Taiwan Social Change Survey in 1984, 1990, and 1994, we investigate the association of educational development and educational mobility in an innovative way. Our results first show that the quasi-symmetry model fits rather poorly to the data. Then, given the operationalization of skew-symmetry parameters (using skew-symmetry models), we find that the flows from elementary school to junior high, and from junior high to senior high, have outpaced the overall structural transformation, in a fashion parallel to the process of educational development.

The phenomenon of feminization of poverty has been widely discussed in US, mainly due to the increasing proportion of poor who were females, during 1960-1980. Along with the trend of urbanization and modernization, since 1990, Taiwan has begun to experience the increase in divorce rates and concomitantly the increase in number of one-parent families. Using data from the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure (SFIE), 1991-2000 waves, conducted by DGBAS annually, the author intended to examine the hypothesis of feminization of poverty in terms of changes in proportion of poverty rate as well as poverty ratio. Instead of using individuals as analytical units, the author focused on comparing various types of household units and found the trend of increasing proportion of female headed households that were poor. However, no tangible trends were found either between families of male and female householders or among different family types, when poverty ratios were used for testing the feminization hypothesis. When the traits of householders were under controlled, unlike those found in the US and some Western countries, mother-only families in Taiwan were not significantly related to the likelihood of poverty, but the number of cohabiting children had positive effects on being poverty of households during 1990s.

This study investigates the links of maternal attitudes in childraising with their behaviors and investments related to children’s health and ability. The study uses data from an interview survey targeted at mothers with children aged four and held in central Taiwan in 2002; its measures for maternal attitudes in child-raising include the major maternal reason for raising children and maternal most-wanted characteristic for children. Maternal behaviors regarding child health which this study investigates are maternal patterns of using prenatal care, breastfeeding children, giving children nutritional supplements, and taking children to exercise. The investments in children’s ability refer to training courses for improving children’s intellectual capability, artistic skills and sporting talents. Results from multivariate analyses for this study show that maternal attitudes in child-raising substantially affect most of these maternal behaviors and investments regarding children’s health and ability.

The sex ratio at birth in mainland China has risen continuously since 1980s and its level is relatively high compared with other societies. It displays not only parity-specific differences but also regional differences. Furthermore, the higher the birth-order, the higher the sex ratio at birth. Recently, Guangdong and Hainan Provinces show the highest sex ratios at birth. Sex-selective abortion is responsible for such high sex ratios at birth. Son preference is a result of many social, economic, cultural, and policy factors combined together, and under current circumstances it is relatively difficult to stop or reverse such a trend.