The present study explores factors that affect young adults’ choices to get married or to remain single by analyzing the in-depth qualitative interviews with 12 unmarried young adults from the Taiwan Youth Project. Stein’s (1981) pushes and pulls concept is applied to our analytical framework. Under forces of push and of pull, three aspects of factors are investigated: social values and norms, external structure, and internal psychological factors. Results indicate that most of the young adults do not reject marriage, but they just do not want to get married at the current moment. The restriction of traditional values and worries about in-law’s relationship are strong forces that push women away from marriage. Economic ability, on the other hand, is an obvious external structure factor that postpone young men’s schedule to enter marriage. Bad marriage examples of parents and friends, however, affect both males’ and females’ attitudes toward getting married. While the society becomes friendly to singles, many young adults are fairly content with the freedom of being single, and think that marriage is not the inevitable process of adult life. Preferring characteristic and emotional compatibility over being married without them is the common pull forces of being single for men and women. The authors contend that young adults in contemporary Taiwan are more cautious about entering marriage, they would rather secure their wealth first and wait for the right person than compromise their ideal for the sake of being married. The open social environment and changes in values also give young adults a chance of pursuing lifestyles other than marriage. Keywords: young adults, marriageable age, singlehood, late marriage, marriage willingness

This study investigates the status attainment of young adults in Taiwan by analyzing the panel data from the Taiwan Youth Project. Three hypotheses about happiness, self-evaluation, and college type and major are tested with linear growth modeling. Estimation results show that an individual’s income and socioeconomic status are not related to happiness at earlier phases, but are slightly influenced by self-evaluation among those whose self-efficacy has increased over time after entering the labor market. In comparison, education demonstrates a substantial influence. Graduates from competitive public or comprehensive universities earn better income and achieve higher socioeconomic status than their counterparts from private ones and colleges of technology. Having a degree in science-technology, or in life science and medicine also boosts income and socioeconomic status during the phase of early adulthood. It is found that the influence of happiness and self-efficacy is transient for job performance, while education generates an enduring effect for young adults in their pursuit of positions in a system of social stratification which has effectively maintained inequality, despite the increasing availability of college education. Keywords: education, happiness, self-evaluations, international socioeconomic index, young adults

In the context of family structure and demographic changes, elderly care and living arrangements have become challenging in many countries. In contrast to the West, a high level of coresidence between parents and adult children has long been sustained by the social norms underpinned by filial piety in Taiwan. However, the declining influence of traditional values gives rise to a need to address the changes in intergenerational coresidence over time. Given the age-period-cohort identification conundrum, there has been a lack of congruent and consistent results from previous research on intergenerational coresidence. To fill the gap, drawing on the longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Family Dynamics survey collected in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, this study adopted the growth curve modeling approach to analyze the dynamics of intergenerational coresidence of respondents born between 1935 and 1963. The analysis result showed that, after controlling for the effects of the period, cohort, and other independent variables, there is a polynomial relationship between age effects and respondents’ probabilities of co-residing with children. Moreover, the result revealed evident gender differences in age effects. While men’s probability of co-residing with children declined as they aged, their female counterparts’ coresidence probability exhibited a double U-shaped projection as it fell, rose, then fell again. The analysis also found that, after controlling for other variables, respondents of younger cohorts were less likely to co-reside with children, which became even more statistically significant after holding the birth year of the eldest child constant. This finding underscores the increasing significance of changes in values and attitudes as younger cohorts come onto the scene. Based on the research findings, this study suggests that the government should revise the familisation-based care policy and design a policy framework that renders the future super-aged society compatible with independent and autonomous living among the elderly. Keywords: intergenerational relationship, intergenerational coresidence, age-period-cohort effect, growth curve model