초록 열기/닫기 버튼
The assessment of disability in Taiwan has changed historically from being part of the bureaucratic legal authority of China, to being medicalized to some extent under Japanese colonialism, and then more fully in post-War Taiwan under Chinese Nationalist Party rule. The most recent trend has been toward de-medicalization due to social awareness and activism as well as the gradual application of international standards based on more variegated criteria. Impairment in traditional Chinese societies was categorized mainly for the purposes of measuring criminal punishment, taxation and compulsory labor. During Japanese colonization, disability statistics were used as a point of comparison with Western data, and the results were taken as a reference point in formulating local health policies. After the Chinese Nationalist Government arrived in Taiwan, disability measures became a key criterion of social welfare assessment. In 2007, accommodating international trends and steady growth in the government’s health budget, Taiwan started to adopt the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) as the basis for disability estimation and need assessment. This study uses ancient records and secondary sources to review the ways in which disability has changed over the course of Taiwan’s history.
