Using Taiwan’s PSFD data and within-between panel data models, this study investigated the relation between marriage and happiness. It did not find a selection effect, indicating that there is no ...statistical evidence that married people were happier two or more years before getting married. There was a honeymoon effect during the marriage year. Several samples were constructed to investigate whether happiness level quickly returned to the baseline after marriage. The results of most samples showed that the happiness levels were significantly higher than the baseline within 3 years of marriage. Although the happiness level after the fourth year of marriage is not significant, its magnitude is not small, indicating a diversity of happiness status after 3 years of marriage. Marriage, on average, enhances happiness more and longer for women than for men.
Using longitudinal data from the Taiwan Panel Study of Family Dynamics between 2007 and 2020, this study investigates how subjective well‐being (SWB) changes before, during, and after unemployment. ...Consistent with extant findings from Western populations, unemployment significantly lowered SWB. Moreover, the anticipation effect was observed—that is, SWB began to decline years before unemployment. The change pattern in SWB before unemployment in Taiwan is similar to that in Western countries. In addition, men's SWB is more responsive to unemployment than women's. However, SWB declined due to unemployment to a smaller degree in Taiwan than in Western populations. More importantly, in contrast to the findings from Western countries, Taiwanese people's SWB quickly recovered to the baseline after reemployment. Thus, unemployment does not permanently harm Taiwanese people's SWB. Similarly, the self‐esteem of unemployed Taiwanese also quickly recovered after reemployment. This study, therefore, argues that the impact of unemployment on SWB is culturally dependent.
Taiwan's National Pension Insurance (NPI) is a compulsory defined benefit pension insurance scheme. However, paying the NPI premium is not mandatory. We use the NPI administrative data of more than ...489 million observations to investigate the NPI's sustainability and inequalities for various groups. We find that NPI participants pay their premiums either consistently or not at all. Although the overall willingness to pay the premiums has been declining, one group of the insured persons consistently pays, thereby maintaining the sustainability of the NPI. Intergenerational and intragenerational inequalities are both found in the NPI; however, the government's premium subsidy reduces intragenerational inequality, except for young adult males who need the NPI and regularly pay premiums. Our empirical results suggest that subsidising these young male citizens strengthens the NPI's sustainability and mitigates the intergenerational and intragenerational inequalities of the NPI.
In the current study, we followed motivational theories and investigated whether granting junior high school students one more opportunity to take the high-stakes high school entrance exam alleviates ...students’ depressive symptoms, and whether the effect is comparable for adolescent boys and girls residing in Taiwan. We analyzed two longitudinal datasets (seventh to tenth grade) from two neighboring cohorts, in which one cohort could take the exam just once (i.e., the pre-reform cohort) and the other twice (i.e., the post-reform cohort). Using a lagged-dependent-variable difference-in-differences model to compare the level of depressive symptoms before and after the entrance exam for the two cohorts, the results revealed that the reform was associated with increases in the level of depressive symptoms for both boys and girls. Despite a higher level of depressive symptoms overall, adolescent girls in the post-reform cohort showed a slower increase in the level of depressive symptoms than boys.
The Lewisian concept of dualism was empirically relevant to Taiwan given its heavy population pressure on scarce land. Most of the literature, albeit based on little solid evidence, concluded that ...Taiwan reached the Lewisian turning point around the end of the 1960s. Others argued that the LTP was after 1979. This paper first follows three criteria proposed by Minami (
1973
). We observe the active reallocation of employment after the mid-1960s and the dramatic increases in real wages of the agricultural and unskilled workers at the end of the 1960s. Furthermore, we introduce a new empirical methodology on the agricultural production function by adding a year dummy variable to identify a potential LTP, which leads to the agricultural marginal product of labor being zero before the LTP and becoming positive thereafter. Our findings support the notion that the LTP in Taiwan occurred around the period 1969-1973, rather than after 1979.
This study utilizes data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the country-level Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) index to explore the relationship between the EPU and subjective health status. ...Unlike studies that use suicide as the investigated variable, we find that the adverse association between subjective health and the EPU for women is no less than that for men. The adverse impact is robust for men of prime working age (25–54). It is also robust for women younger than 25, the age range (15–25) among women that suffer from depression at the highest rate. In addition, an asymmetric effect occurs for males of prime working age (25–54) and women older than 55. Specifically, the asymmetric effect indicates that the association between subjective health status and the EPU differs when the EPU is declining and increasing for both sexes, with the effect of the former greater than the latter. This might reflect that the EPU affects both sexes through different mechanisms, with men of prime working age being breadwinners and older women's long life expectancy and poverty caused by shorter careers.
•This study explores the relationship between the EPU and subjective health status.•The adverse association between subjective health and the EPU exists.•The adverse impact is robust for men of prime working age (25–54).•The adverse impact is also robust for women younger than 25.•The asymmetric effect occurs for males of prime working age (25–54) and women older than 55.
•Men’s height preferences are responsive to gender-role ideology.•Women’s height preferences are insensitive to gender-role ideology.•Women prefer a tall partner much more than men prefer a short ...partner.•Women’s height preferences are sensitive to their own characteristics.•In marriage, gender-role ideology is not relevant to their partners’ height.
This study used Taiwan’s Panel Study of Family Dynamics (PSFD) 2016 data to investigate the relationship between gender-role ideology and height preference in mate selection, finding that women prefer a tall partner much more than men prefer a short partner. However, when traditional gender norms prevail, men with a high levels of adherence to gender-role ideology cannot accept a female partner who is either too tall or too short. Men’s height preferences are more responsive to social norms than women’s, while women’s height preferences are more sensitive to their own demographic characteristics than men’s. The tallest and shortest female partners accepted by men with strong traditional gender-role ideology are 2.37 cm shorter and 2.21 cm taller, respectively, than men who disagree with gender norms. In marriage, gender-role ideology is not relevant to partner height, regardless of sex.
This study considers both vertical and horizontal educational mismatches, with the former referring to overeducation and undereducation, and the latter to the mismatch between college major and job. ...It is found that the wage premium of the vertical educational match is greater than that of the horizontal educational match. A better vertical match augments the wage premium of an improvement in the horizontal match, and vice versa. The horizontal educational mismatch appears to be an extended scenario of overeducation because graduates from colleges with low rankings have a higher probability of being vertically overeducated as well as horizontally mismatched. Graduates from highly‐ranked colleges are privileged to not only have high earnings but also to have low probabilities for the vertical and horizontal mismatches. These low probabilities indirectly raise their earnings. The indirect effects of academic characteristics on earnings are calculated. The approach we propose provides an insight into how academic characteristics comprehensively influence earnings.
A gender gap has been found in mathematics (boys outperform girls) that has prevailed across countries for many decades. Whether this gap results from nature or nurture has been hotly debated. Using ...the evidence of PISA 2003 and the gender equality index of 2003, some researchers have argued that an improvement in gender equality reduces the gender gap in mathematics. This study used five waves of country-level PISA data and, controlling for country fixed effects, found no evidence to support this argument. Furthermore, individual data for PISA 2012 and the multilevel data model were used. The conclusion drawn also does not support the argument. In fact, the relationship between gender equality and the gender gap in mathematics vanished after PISA 2003.
•Height and earnings are positively correlated in a sample of female Taiwanese graduates.•Height does not raise entry earnings via cognitive, non-cognitive, and physical capability.•The most likely ...explanation for this positive correlation between height and earnings in these data is statistical discrimination.
Using a data set of Taiwanese female graduates in 2006, this study finds that height and earnings are positively correlated for full-time workers. However, it is not because tall individuals went to better colleges or received better grades (cognitive ability), not because they are gifted with superior physical strength or because they have participated in more extracurricular activities (non-cognitive ability), and not because they work in a highly paid occupation. We find that statistical discrimination (or perceptual bias) is most likely to play a role in determining the entry earnings of female graduates. In addition, we find that an estimator of the height premium for females is downward-biased if weight is omitted from the model.
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