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The civil war in mainland China during 1945–1949 resulted in an enormous influx of immigrants to Taiwan, the majority of whom were single male soldiers in their twenties or thirties. In addition, a military marriage ban prevented most of the immigrant soldiers from getting married until 1959. These two factors have profound, but distinct, influences on the effective prime-age sex ratio in the marriage market in post-war Taiwan. Unfortunately, the official population data in Taiwan excluded the military and thus did not reveal the true male population until the late 1960s. This paper proposes a method to impute the effective prime-age sex ratio. The imputation result shows that the effective prime-age sex ratio first rose in the 1950s, peaked in the 1960s, and then declined in the 1970s. At its peak, as many as 120 men were competing for only 100 women in the marriage market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study focused on the effects of the neighbourhood on the fertility outcomes among marriage immigrant wives in Taiwan. In particular, we investigated the effects of the proportion of marriage immigrants in the neighbourhood and ethnic composition of the neighbours on fertility behaviours of foreign wives. The study further explored whether and to what extent commercialised cross-border marriages moderate the relationships. Micro-data from the 2013 Living Demand of Foreign and Mainland Spouses and administrative data for 21 cities and counties were utilised in this study. We found that immigrant wives in an area with a higher proportion of marriage immigrants were likely to have higher fertility and shorter intervals between births. Immigrant wives who married through a broker were likely to have lower fertility if they were living in a neighbourhood with a higher proportion of marriage immigrants. The proportion of immigrants from Mainland China in the neighbourhood was negatively associated with fertility among immigrant wives from Mainland China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]