24.3
Regional Development and Social Inequality in the Age of Globalization: The Case of Taiwan
Ruey-Ming Tsay (Department of Sociology, Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan)
Abstract
Modern societies all face a fast-developing and fast-changing global world. Recent development of tighter connection among Asian countries, especially with Chinese economy has brought significant impacts on the regional development and local life of these countries. It is expected that the emergence of the Pan Asian economy might have changed the class structure and social distributions in Taiwan. The paper proposes to study the changes of Taiwan’s social class as well as occupational structures during the last twenty years. Further analysis might show the extent of the restructuring of Taiwan’s occupational structure. In addition to occupational structure changes, this paper will also focus on the trend of economic development. To compete with other economies, Taiwan government has pursued a series of large-scale urban development and regional reorganization, during the years of fast globalization, which might have caused an unbalanced development among regions and skyrockets the housing price in urban areas and thus further exacerbates the income inequality. I will analyze both macro and micro data to test the hypotheses whether the regional development either in a national scale or within the national territory has affected the degree of social stratification in terms of social classes and the inequality of distribution.
Keywords: Class Structure, Social Inequality, Regional Development, Globalization