CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF INCREASING CLASS INEQUALITY IN TAIWAN.

The paper reviews recent findings of class analysis in Taiwan. The studies find that income inequality among social classes has continuously increased, and point out two sources of the inequality: (1) industrial upgrading led to in- creasing wage inequality between skilled workers and unskilled workers; (2) the cross-strait open trade policy under the globalization context led to increasing income inequality between the employers plus some top managers who went to China for investment, and the local employees plus self-employed in Taiwan. The increasing class inequality also results in declining class mobility, shrink- ing subjective social status, and rising political discontent among middle- and lower- class people. The increasing class inequality may partially explain the emergence of the 2014 Sunflowermovement in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]