Unemployment and Family Behavior in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper utilizes official monthly time series data of Taiwan from January 1978 to April 2000 and estimates of a Vector Auto-regressive model with centered seasonal dummy variables to investigate the interrelationships between unemployment and family behavior such as divorce, marriage, and conception in Taiwan. When using the unemployment rate as a proxy for the cycle indicator, the primary finding is that the unemployment rate has a positive influence on the divorce rate in Taiwan. In addition, the marriage rate turns out to be positively affected by the unemployment rate as well. However, the conception rate is found to be negatively affected by the unemployment rate.