Comparisons of migrants versus native populations have become increasingly important as a means of gaining insight into the factors affecting health and mortality levels and the relationship between them. Taiwan underwent a unique migration in 1949-50, as more than a million people, mostly young men, arrived from Mainland China following the Communist civil war victory. The Mainlanders were distinct from the original settlers in several ways: they represented different provinces in China, were better educated, and had distinct occupational profiles. Since 1950, Taiwan has experienced a rapid demographic transition and notable economic development, resulting in mortality decline. In this paper, we generate age- and cause-specific death rates circa 1990 by education and nativity to evaluate the relative importance of each factor. We also use longitudinal survey data to help interpret the differentials in terms of selection, risk factors, and other dynamics of health and mortality.

Based on the definition of the average NHI medical expenditures, this paper decomposes the average expenditures into four components; namely expenditures per day, days per outpatient visit or hospital stay, visits or stays per year per person, and age composition of the insured population. It is demonstrated that the expenditures per day component declined with small fluctuations during the 1996-2005 period, the visits per year component fluctuated horizontally, the age composition component steadily pushed the average expenditures upward, and the duration of visit was the component most important in bringing the average expenditures upward. A morbidity expansion, combined with the population aging, is proposed as a plausible explanation for the increase in medical expenditures.

The existing literature on migration decisions relates economic variables mainly to inter-regional migration, but seldom to intra-region migration. This paper argues that a higher intra-region mobility rate may indicate the fact that households in the region can be more effective in raising the quality of living and inmeeting their needs bymoving to another house in the same region. Employing panel data covering 22 localities in Taiwan and the period of 1982-2007, this study analyzes determinants of intra-region migration based on a few different perspectives. Our empirical results suggest that intra-region mobility rate is negatively associated with homeownership rate, but positively associated with marriage rate, floor area of occupancy permit, vacancy rate, and the ratio of price to income. Both homeownership rate and marriage rate are among key determinants. We find the individual fixed effects in urbanized regions and the eastern region are statistically higher than ones in other regions. Moreover, the significant time-fixed effects suggest that the intra-region mobility rate is influenced by macro-economy and housing market cycles, as well as housing policies.

In past studies, there are two theories explaining the process of decline in fertility. The first is the socioeconomic adjustment theory, which indicates that change in fertility is related to motivational forces stemming from changes in socioeconomic conditions; the second is the innovation diffusion theory, which admits the importance of motivational forces as well, but argues that social networks and interpersonal connections, rather than socioeconomic factors, are the reasons for making people accept contraception. In this paper, by using the methods of spatial econometrics, we consider both the factors of socioeconomic structure and spatial diffusion to explain the decline in fertility rates in Taiwan across 358 townships and within three years, 1980, 1990 and 2001. The spatial lag dependent variable, representing neighborhood effects, is used to verify the application of the innovation diffusion theory. The findings suggest that socioeconomic structure factors could explain about half of the variance in fertility rates; in addition, ethnic factors are significant, showing that some cultural reasons played an important role in the process leading to a low fertility rate. Finally, the existence of neighborhood effects in our regression models implies that the innovation diffusion theory has been verified, and its influence has been increasing with time.