This paper explores the life-cycle academic productivity among Taiwan's physicists, by taking into account the role of research grants. Our sample consists of 327 physicists from Academia Sinica and 11 universities with Ph.D. programs in physics. The academic productivity of each scholar is assessed yearly by the number of publications in 5 various measures. On average, there are 7.1 annual observations per scholar. The life-cycle phase is gauged by professional age, which is defined as years since receiving a Ph.D. degree. By employing the random-effects Tobit model, our empirical results show that both professional age and research grants exert a significant impact upon academic productivity. Research grants reveal an even stronger effect than professional age does, particularly in the number of SCI articles as well as in the number of core-journal articles. In terms of these two unadjusted author-number publication measures, life-cycle academic productivity rises and then falls as scholars age and/or research grants increase. Ceteris paribus, the academic productivity of Taiwan's physicists is found to peak at 19-20 years after the receipt of their Ph.D. degree.

This paper investigates whether new migrants to Beijing have achieved upward social mobility to become the middle class through spatial mobility. Expanding the size of the middle class is one of China's development goals. With the household registration system still exerting a strong influence on Chinese society, there exists a complex relationship between spatial and social mobility among new migrants. This research asks two questions: What are the factors affecting the social mobility of new migrants to Beijing? Can spatial mobility overcome institutional obstacles on the path to social mobility? Our research focuses on analyzing the characteristics and grouping of new migrants through fieldwork and in-depth interviews of 57 respondents. Based on their social class status, we divide the new migrants into four groups: ＂marginal professionals,＂ ＂marginal white-collar,＂ ＂new college graduates,＂ and ＂marginal new rich.＂ The relationship between social and spatial mobility of the individual groups of new migrants are identified through overlapping their major features. Our findings show that among the four groups, the ＂marginal professionals＂ and ＂marginal new rich＂, who possess the most and the least cultural capital, respectively, have more opportunities to accumulate capital through spatial mobility and continue their movement in the future. The ＂new college graduates＂ also have plentiful cultural capital, but their experience in spatial mobility is all education-related. These moves cannot be turned into the capital to increase social mobility. For new migrants to Beijing, cultural capital cannot become the key driver of social mobility. The unique phenomenon of Beijing's marginal middle class also shows in their view of the hukou system. Because of the exclusion by the hukou system, groups having more negative views of the hukou system tend to search for the possibility of social mobility through spatial mobility. On the other hand, groups which are indifferent to the hukou system or succumb to the pressure of the hukou system are are less likely to accumulate capital through spatial mobility. Though they are candidates for the new middle class, their living space in the city has been increasingly reduced under the new urbanization policy. They face a difficult decision as to whether to stay, or leave Beijing.

Indigenous peoples are underprivileged groups in many countries, and usually have low socioeconomic status as well. Unfortunately, often there are not sufficient resources for education, welfare, and medical care to lead them to a higher socioeconomic class. Taiwan's government has been dedicated to improving the living environment and life quality of Taiwan's aborigines, with more public resources being allocated to the indigenous peoples. However, slow economic growth and rapid population aging further restrict the allocation of public resources. For example, Taiwan’s government has issued (or is planning) a lot of elderly-related social policies, including the New Labor Pension Act, National Pension System, and Long-term Care Insurance. We need to construct suitable measures, in addition to demographic statistics, to efficiently design public policies for the indigenous peoples. The mortality rates (and life expectancy) are good indicators for measuring life quality, and we will explore the mortality rates of Taiwanese aborigines in this study. We use data from the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples open research Data (TIPD) database maintained by the Council of Indigenous People, and focus on tribes with larger population sizes: Amis, Atayal, and Paiwan. Since the population size of Taiwanese aborigines is small, we consider graduation methods to smooth the age-specific mortality rates, including the Whittaker Ratio method, Partial Standard Mortality Ratio (PSMR), and stochastic models. We expect that the results of this study can serve as a reference for policy making for Taiwanese aborigines.

Recently, a research paper in Nature claimed that the maximum human life span is 115 years old, with very little chance to attain 125 years of age. Although demographers and biologists are arguing that increases in human longevity continue, some researchers have pointed out that the human lifespan reached its peak in the 1990s, based on an analysis of demographic data of more than 40 countries in the Human Mortality Database, and attributed this to the progress of science and medical technology. However, others have pointed out that although scientists claimed that the upper limit of human life is 65, 85 or even 105 years in the past, all these assertions were later overturned. Critics of the study point out that it did not use demographic and statistical data to verify the accuracy of the relevant hypotheses, saying that ＂this kind of studies do not provide any scientific evidence for how long people would live.＂ In Taiwan, the national income and living and medical standards have reached the level of developed country in the past two decades. Although the life expectancy in 2015 was 80.2 years old, the life expectancy growth rate has been limited recently. In 2013-2014, there was even a slight decline in life expectancy. This paper intends to use the statistical data on life expectancy in Taiwan by means of the idea of randomization in statistics to explore (1) trend of life table changes, 1953-2015, (2) the sum of life expectancy in birth, middle age and old age with life table entropy, and (3) trends of the gains of life expectancy by elimination of the causes of death to discuss related issues about the maximum life span. Our study reveals the maximum life span in Taiwan is about 93 and 95 years of age for males and females respectively.