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This study examined the relationship between the changes of physical fitness across the 3-year spectrum of senior high school study and academic performance measured by standardized tests in Taiwan. A unique dataset of 149 240 university-bound senior high school students from 2009 to 2011 was constructed by merging two nationwide administrative datasets of physical fitness test performance and the university entrance exam scores. Hierarchical linear regression models were used. All regressions included controls for students' baseline physical fitness status, changes of physical fitness performance over time, age and family economic status. Some notable findings were revealed. An increase of 1 SD on students' overall physical fitness from the first to third school year is associated with an increase in the university entrance exam scores by 0.007 and 0.010 SD for male and female students, respectively. An increase of 1 SD on anaerobic power (flexibility) from the first to third school year is positively associated with an increase in the university entrance exam scores by 0.018 (0.010) SD among female students. We suggest that education and school health policymakers should consider and design policies to improve physical fitness as part of their overall strategy of improving academic performance.

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Our study on Taiwan's experience should provide a valuable lesson to countries that are in an initial stage of proposing a universal health insurance system. Although NHI is designed to ensure the equitable right to access health care, it may result in differential impacts on health service utilization among the elderly across areas. The rural elderly tend to confront more challenges in accessing health care associated with spatial distance, transportation, social isolation, poverty, and a lack of health care providers, especially medical specialists.

Background. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. Meanwhile, obesity has been recognized as a global epidemic. This study aims to examine the extent to which cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with body mass among adult males and females in Taiwan. Materials and Methods. A nationally representative dataset consisting of 68,175 adults aged 18–60, including 31,743 males and 36,432 females, was used. Several multivariate regression models were used to investigate the relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness and body weight status, after controlling for adults' sociodemographic status. Results. A one-unit increase in the BMI lowered the cardiorespiratory fitness score by 0.316 and 0.368 points for adult males and females, respectively. Among adult males, compared to those of normal weight, adult males who were underweight, overweight, or obese had a lower cardiorespiratory fitness score by 1.287, 0.845, and 3.353 points, respectively. Similar results could be found in female samples. Conclusion. The overweight and obese adults had much lower levels of cardiorespiratory fitness as compared to their normal weight counterparts. Given the upward trend in the prevalence of overweight and obesity, it is important to help overweight and obese people to become more fit and reach their healthy weight.

Although NHI is designed to ensure equality for accessing health care, the implementation of NHI has also improved the subjective well-being of the elderly, with a larger improvement for the elderly women. The post-NHI disparity reductions in life satisfaction between the previously uninsured and insured are significantly greater among elderly women. Our analysis of Taiwan's experience should provide a valuable lesson to countries that are in the initial stages of proposing a universal health insurance program.

Despite a major expansion in the number of students in higher education, students from rural areas continue to be underrepresented at selective universities. To reduce the urban-rural imbalance of entry to selective universities, institutions in many countries of the world have implemented admission policies favoring rural students. Previous evidence has shown that rural students have lower academic performance than their urban peers, which leads to concern that rural students will reduce the academic excellence of selective universities. Using the introduction of a university admission policy favoring rural students in Taiwan and a unique administrative data set of students' academic records, we compare the academic performance of students from rural areas with that of their urban counterparts during their college years. The results show that rural students have consistently outperformed urban students in semester grade point averages and class rank percentile across time; however, the differences in academic performance are mainly attributed to the rural students' initial outperformance in the first semester of the freshman year.

In this study, I investigate how the impact of the National Health Insurance (NHI) introduction in Taiwan in 1995 on the labor force participation (LFP) decisions of married women varies with income and family structures. Employing the difference-in-differences (DID) approach, I find that the NHI introduction reduced LFP of married women in the twenty-fifth to fiftieth percentiles of the income distribution between 17.8 and 21.7 percentage points (33%-40%). The difference-in-differences-in-differences (DIDID) results suggest that married women in different family structures (the presence of children under 3 or less healthy elderly household members) did not respond differently to the NHI introduction.