The Comparative Time Series Analysis of Males' and Females' Indigenous Populations Under the Education Affirmative Action Reform in Taiwan: The Influence of Surname-Based Status Inheritance Rule on Two Generations

In Taiwan, 550,000 Indigenous Peoples accounts for 2.3% of the population, whose rights were affirmed in 1997 Constitution Amendment. In 2007, the Indigenous education preferential treatments were reformed as "affirmative actions" for future self-governance. According to the Indigenous Peoples’ Status Act of 2001, similar to 1985 Bill C-31 Amendment of Indian Act in Canada, intermarried Indigenous women not only can restore status, but also pass it down to descendants following maternal surname. Since then, males' population has increased by 56,000 (27%), and females’ has increased by 82,000 (42%). The sex ratio has decreased from 105 to 95. This study aims to analyze the impacts of those policies on Indigenous males’ and females’ populations. Time series analysis was adopted, using monthly statistics released by the Ministry of Interior.

The findings are as follows: First, the auto-correlation functions of females’ series are higher than males’ due to more increasing numbers, but seasonal auto-correlation functions are equivalent, reflecting the resembling periodical increase during the beginning of semesters for obtaining educational grants or additional scores for entrance examinations; Second, the extra increase of females’ series promoted by educational affirmative action reform were much more than males’; Finally, both series can be accurately forecasted with ARIMA(1,2,1)(2,1,0)₁₂ model.

The differences above reflected the far more females’ population increase, and the sex ratio for natural increase is 65 (mainly due to males’ much shorter life expectancy), while 68 is for the numbers of Indigenous status registrants. For the age group of 20~64, there were about 16,000 and 34,000 registrants of males and females respectively; while 26,000 and 28,000 were for the age group of 1~19. It implies that the Chinese patriarchic “surname-based status inheritance rule” restricted male adults born to a Chinese father from registering Indigenous status much more than females, but not so for younger generation.