My research interests are in the aging population, family change, and social policies. During the 1990s, I have conducted a series of research on the population change in Taiwan and its impacts on the national pension system; besides examining the development and evolution of pension systems in Europe and America, proposing the Taiwanese model of national pension system, and simulating how varying methods of finance management may impact on the pension system, the studies discussed the potential and challenges of increasing the retirement age to alleviate the financial pressure. Another point of interest is in population and health, including the “birth quality” of foreign-born women in Taiwan, the transition of elderly health conditions, and the illustration and elucidation of life tables, life expectancy, and cost of care. Every person’s place in the society does not stand alone from each other, but shares living and finance with their family members. Therefore, the discussion of population transition and social security systems should start from the angle of families. To explore the future trend of family formation, I have started to investigate the dynamic shift of family formation since 1997, interpreting the impacts of marriage rates, mortality rate, birth rates, and occurrence rates of leaving parental home on family size and family structures. In the process of research, I have noticed that the marriage rate in post-war Taiwan changed rapidly, and that there is insufficient research on the trend. Thus, I have conducted a series of research on marriage and family, including the estimation of cohabiting population, the change of assortative mating model, the pace of marriage and fertility, and labor participation of married women. The shared conclusion of these studies is that, in terms of the two key factors of family formation, marriage and fertility, Taiwan retains firmly traditional values. Taiwan’s change in marriage and fertility echoes McDonald’s Gender Equality theory, in that the gender equity in “family-oriented institutions” lags behind gender equity in “individual-oriented institutions,” and thus resulting in the drop of marriage rates and fertility rates. Therefore, my research lately focuses on “why the gender equity in “family- oriented institutions” cannot catch up?,” “can Taiwan’s marriage and fertility rate rebound?,” “if marriage rate does not rebound, how can we face the upcoming ‘single society’?.”
