林明仁 Ming-Jen Lin​

The inverted-U relationship between anxiety and performance in the context of endogeneity has yet to be investigated. Junior high school students from Taiwan were used as the sample for investigating the effect of anxiety levels on the comprehensive analysis aptitude of students. The ordinary least square (OLS) analysis indeed confirmed the inverted-U relationship. In addition, both fixed-effect analysis and two-stage least square (2SLS) analysis using variation in acne severity to instrument for anxiety also concluded that anxiety increased performance at lower anxiety levels. However, this relationship was positive and insignificant at higher anxiety levels. Overall, our results supported the left (increasing) part of the inverted-U relationship between anxiety and performance, but found no evidence for the right (decreasing) part of the inverted-U relationship.

This paper tests whether in utero conditions affect long-run developmental outcomes using the 1918 influenza pandemic in Taiwan as a natural experiment. Combining several historical and current datasets, we find that cohorts in utero during the pandemic are shorter as children/adolescents and less educated compared to other birth cohorts. We also find that they are more likely to have serious health problems including kidney disease, circulatory and respiratory problems, and diabetes in old age. Despite possible positive selection on health outcomes due to high infant mortality rates during this period (18%), our paper finds a strong negative impact of in utero exposure to influenza.

This study finds that the introduction of sex‐selective abortion in Taiwan due to the legalization of abortion when prenatal sex‐detection technology was already available increased the fraction of males born at higher parities and changed the composition of mothers choosing to give birth. Controlling for compositional changes, we find that access to sex‐selective abortion reduced relative neonatal female mortality rates for higher‐parity births.

We used a nationwide demographic survey to study the relation between television exposure and women’s empowerment in India. Ordinary least squares (OLS) results suggested that TV exposure improved Indian women’s status. We used the propensity score matching (PSM) method to mitigate the potential threat of endogeneity. The results indicate that TV exposure is correlated with greater awareness of autonomy, greater financial independence, less unwanted pregnancy (birth control), negative attitude toward beating, a lower tendency of giving birth, a smaller family, and a lower preference level for sons.

OBJECTIVE:
Mothers sero-positive for hepatitis B are slightly more likely to have a son. It is not known whether it is ever having HBV (HBsAg[+]) or currently active HBV (HBeAg[+]) which is associated with having a son.
METHOD:
Multivariable linear regression was used to assess the adjusted association of HBeAg(+) with offspring sex in all (90%) births (~3 million) in Taiwan from 1988 to 1999.
RESULTS:
Totally, 5% of mothers were HBeAg(+). HBeAg(+) mothers were slightly more likely to have a son (sex ratio 108 rather than 106) adjusted for HBsAg, birth order, mother's age, birth year, and area of residence.
CONCLUSION:
At a population level HBV status makes little difference to the sex ratio at birth.