Child Poverty in Taiwan - Multi-Dimensional Trends and Their Determinants

• Main Authors: Shou-lu Lee, 李秀如
• Other Authors: 王德睦
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/30425402965363236464

博士 === 國立中正大學 === 社會福利所 === 97 === Most existing studies use child poverty rates to gauge the severity of child poverty problems. In contrast to these studies, this paper modifies the elaborated SST (Sen-Shorrocks-Thon) index of poverty intensity by Osberg & Xu (2000) to depict the multi-dimensions of child poverty in Taiwan and their long-term trends. Using the data of Income and Expenditure Survey, this paper computes the values of the SST index and its three constituents, child poverty rates, average poverty gap ratios among the poor children, and the Gini index values of poverty gap ratios among all children, in Taiwan from 1979 to 2005. The SST index reached its highest levels and indicated the worst levels of child poverty in late 1980s and early 1990s among the entire studied period. The SST fluctuations are driven by variations of poverty rates and mostly by changes of average poverty gap ratios. Strikingly the Gini index portrays a totally different picture. The Gini index hit its lowest levels and revealed the lowest inequality in the distribution of poverty gap ratios among children in late 1980s and early 1990s. Employing Das Gupta’s (1993) decomposition of rates and a regression-based Shapley value decomposition, this study reveals that the child poverty trends are mainly driven by market income during 1988-1993 and primarily steered by tax and public transfer over the 1993-2005 period.