Both the Western model and the urbanization thesis have been used to explain urban growth for the urbanizing countries of Asia. This paper examines levels and rates of urbanization in Taiwan and its ability to absorb a growing labor supply in its urban centers. Urban growth is concentrated in the Northern region and in large urban places. By 1975, half of Taiwan’s population was located in places of 50,000 or more and 80 percent of the total population growth between 1964 and 1975 occurred in urban areas. Despite substantial urban growth and an even more rapid labor force growth, workers were absorbed into “urban” industries and occupations. Based on this ability to absorb, Taiwan does not appear to be overurbanized and seems to fit the Western mode.

The article discusses the main function of family planning communication. Has family planning communication changed how married females think and act about family planning? Does it only support or reinforce how married females think and act about family planning?
The study is based on the survey done by Family Planning Institute in Taiwan Province in 1972. The survey covers 1,880 females aged 18 to 34, and the article only analyzes data from 1,217 married females.
The article adopts multiple classification analysis to analyze five categories of variables: social and population variable, social atmosphere variable, family planning knowledge variable, family planning attitude variable, and family planning action variable. Results show, so far, family planning communication only serves as an agent of reinforcement.

This paper re-examines the relationship between modernization and fertility based on the 1970 Puerto Rican census data. A comparison of the findings with a previous study of 1950 and 1960 Puerto Rico census is presented. For a society in the midst of economic development such as Puerto Rico, it is proposed that community’s fertility rate is a function of both the general level and timing of societal development. The paper lays its special emphasis on this. The findings indicate that education and industrialization have increased their direct negative influences on fertility from 1950 to 1970 while income and proportion of women working have decreased theirs. Urbanization has lost its direct influence on fertility since 1960 and is distributing its effect indirectly through other variables.

The paper applies the urban population density function and its derivatives to the analysis of population redistribution in the Taipei metropolitan area during the period of 1962-1979. In the first section, the Taipei metropolitan area defined as composed of the 16 administrative districts of the Taipei City and the 12 townships surrounding the city. The definition is based on an assumption that the population densities of different locales in a metropolitan area are relatively symmetric in a descending order about the center. In the second section, the urban population density function and its derivatives are discussed. It is found that though the urban population density function fits well to the empirical data of the cities, a population growth equation derived from it departs systematically from the historical pattern of differential growth in the metropolitan area. In the third section, with some logarithmic transformation, OLS procedure is applied to yield statistical estimation of the parameters. It is empirically determined that while the density function provides an accurate series of measurement of the extent of suburbanization in the metropolitan area, the growth equation fits rather poorly to the distributions of population growth rates. The Burgess' concentric zone theory as a theory of ecological succession is invoked to render a plausible explanation of the systematic departures of growth equation from the growth rates. A dynamic model of city growth, it is suggested is meaningless without a built-in process of ecological succession.

The main purpose of this study has been to ascertain the determinants of age-specific female fertility rates among Taiwan’s 361 local administrative areas. The New Home Economics derived from Neoclassical economic theories provided models that, modified slightly by the emphasis of the demographers and sociologists on factors formulating tastes, we apply to the 1976 Household Registration Data in Taiwan. In specifying models, we not only include four female age-specific explanatory variables which are crucial to the timing of childbearing and women’s other life-cycle events, but also frame a simultaneous equations system to allow for possible interactions between their fertility behavior and labor supply decisions.

In many countries female participation in the labor force has often been cited as one of the main factors depressing fertility. Previous research findings in Taiwan, however, do not indicate female employment’s negative effect on fertility. This study attempts to clarify the causal relationship between female employment and fertility. The data were obtained from the employment and fertility survey conducted by Executive Yuan in 1979. Real family size, ideal family size and desired family size are used as the indicators of fertility. In the first section the fertility of working women is higher than the fertility of now-working women, but it does not reveal the same result when the degree of urbanization, education and age are controlled. In order to test the hypothesis of the inverse relationship between female labor force participation and fertility, the technique of ANOV and Path Analysis are used in the other sections of this study. Age, education and urbanization of resident are used as exogenous factors. The findings indicate that the working experience of women does not have obvious effect on their real family size, but the nature and/or kind of occupation of working women has direct influence on fertility. Urbanization of resident does not show its direct influence on fertility and distributing its effect indirectly through the occupation of women. Both age and education do have direct and indirect influence on fertility. The conclusion of this research is that the occupation is an important intervening variable on fertility.