This paper explores the trend of educational opportunity competition at different educational levels over different birth cohorts, examines the effect of cohort size on the competition for educational opportunity at different educational level, and tests whether the effect of cohort size on competition for educational opportunity differs by educational reform stages. With data from Education Statistics of the Republic of China, 1958-2010, a multilevel growth curve analysis is employed to analyze the relationships between birth cohort size and competition for educational opportunity at different educational levels, and to assess whether its relationship changes across educational reform stages. The results reveal that birth cohort size has a negative effect on the competition for educational opportunity at the junior high school level, no significant effect at the senior high school level, and a positive effect at the college level when holding the effect of educational reform constant. Moreover, the effect of birth cohort size on the competition for educational opportunity differs by the stage for educational reform. In other words, educational reform does moderate the magnitude of the effect of cohort size on the competition for educational opportunity.

Population projections are important in estimating the population for future dates used by the government for policy planning. The cohort component method is the most popular population projection method, and requires information on future fertility, mortality, and migration. These three factors are usually decided by expert opinions as well as historical data. However, there are concerns in using expert opinions. For example, it is not easy to quantify the expert opinions, the expert opinions do not have the meaning in probability, and the projection results based on expert opinion usually have small variance. In recent years, stochastic methods combined with expert opinions have been widely applied in order to improve the quality of population projections. The data format of quantification also plays a crucial role in quantifying the expert opinion, and in this study we explore the estimation methods for various data formats. We first review some popular methods for quantifying expert opinions, including the focused group interview and Delphi method. Then, we use computer simulation to evaluate the influence of data format on the analysis methods. It seems that, if the expert opinion is quantified in the form of payment card or binary data, the results are not very reliable. Therefore, we propose a sequential design to collect expert opinion and the simulation study shows promising results.

This paper studies young Taiwanese who migrated to Singapore and Hong Kong for work, study or family reasons. It is based mainly on 40 in-depth interviews conducted in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in 2011-2014, thus obtaining narratives that contain detailed information to render nuanced understanding of the interviewees and the environment. The paper begins with a review of pertinent literature that includes youth migration and global talent, and the 1.5 generation migrants from Taiwan. It is followed by an analysis of major types of young Taiwanese in Singapore and Hong Kong with regard to: (1) their reasons for moving to Singapore or Hong Kong, (2) the types and trajectories of movement, (3) their social and cultural adaptation, and (4) prospects of returning to Taiwan. Apart from the higher pay and fringe benefits, both Singapore and Hong Kong provide them with a cosmopolitan environment for global pursuits to which their education applies. However, there are disadvantages of living in Singapore and Hong Kong, such as climate, social and cultural differences, high cost of living, and quality of life. Being highly educated, they have contributed to the pool of global talents that both states compete for, while gaining overseas experiences in enhancing their skills and exposure to new social and cultural environments. At this juncture, Taiwan's policy to recruit young global talents remains at stake, and the urgent need is to prevent its well educated professionals from leaving, as well as to attract them back with more vigorous and effective polices. Due to the impermanent nature of young Taiwanese on the move, Taiwan may want to tap this human resource as a strategy to compete for global talents, as a critical aspect of population policy and social transformation.

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