The Availability Index Assessment Combined with Ages and Educations Factors in Year-2010 in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chin-Ming Hsu, 許靖敏
• Other Authors: Jung-Fu Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/33458526339486268127

碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 社會與區域發展學系碩士班 === 101 === For the rapid increase in population of late marriage and even the never married, Taiwan has faced with declining birth rate and an aging phenomenon on the population structure. While the sex ratio imbalance in the population structure will affect the marriage opportunities, but the actual selective process, individuals mate pairing factors for marriage opportunities, has a more far-reaching impact. Demographer Mr. Veevers (1988) has developed a method, Availability Index, to assess the matching factors of all ages, where the method is combined with the considering of mate age and population structure. Recently Taiwan has some studies by using this method on cross-year mate selection opportunities, for example Jung-Fu Chang, Ph. D., Huei-Mei Fan, 2010; Jung-Fu Chang, Ph. D., Tzu-Yin Chen, Chin-Ming Hsu, Dec-2011, and on cross-field comparison, for example Jung-Fu Chang, Ph. D., Hsing-Mei Wang, Su-Dguan Hsu, Kuan-Hsu Chen, 2010; Jung-Fu Chang, Ph. D., Su-Dguan Hsu, Zon-Chi Huo, 2012. Above studies assess the mate opportunities by using the model of Veevers’ Availability Index by input the population data in Taiwan. For the marriage opportunities influenced by many mating factors, but, most of the studies only focus on one of these factors, like Veevers’ Availability Index discussed on the age-factor only. The education is one of the most important factors, and there is significant difference of the never married population in the same age with different education. The percentage of never married young groom or bride with higher education is much lower than it with lower education. This study assesses the marriage opportunities by not only adopting the concept of Veevers’ Availability Index, considering with age-factor, but also considering with the education factor, which is so called Education-Preference Availability Index. By inputting the year-2010 data from the Ministry of the Interior, “Marriages by Ages of Groom and Bride”, “Marriages by Educations of Groom and Bride”, “ Year-End Population by Age, Sex and Marital Status for Counties and Cities” and “Population by Oder of Age”, the following results came out directly or by computing; (a) the age range of mate selection of groom and bride by ages; (b) mating opportunities of ages and educations, which is defined as “PP” value; (c) population of never married in ages and educations. And, the method of Computing the Education-Preference Availability Index has been developed, which is defined as how many potential mate available for every 100 never-married grooms or brides in certain age and certain education. For example, how many potential grooms will be available for each 100 brides of the 34-year-old and Junior College Graduated, and means that the higher the index number, the more the mating opportunities. The formula has been developed as bellow: Education-Preference Availability Index＝NumberOfPotentialGroom(Bride)/NumberOfNeverMarriedBride(Groom)inCertainAgeAndEducation× 100 According to the computing data and results, it shows that the method of Single P has less error in the assessment of the number of potential groom or bride. And, we can conclude that, first of all, the results of our developed method have the same trend with the results of Luoh, Ming-ching (2006) and Yang, ChinLi (2006); 2nd, the youngest age group has the best mating opportunities; 3rd, the mating opportunity of Junior Graduated brides in all ages is higher than it of University Graduated or over; 4th, from the point of view of mating, the higher education level brides, like University Graduated or over, have the lower opportunities; and 5th, there is obvious change in mating opportunities when grooms have higher education level than University graduated, and it will be higher than brides at 39-year older.