Wan-Chi Chen has received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago and is currently director of Research Center for Education Systems and Policy, National Academy for Educational Research, Taiwan and a professor of sociology at the National Taipei University, Taiwan. Her research areas include education, family, and subjective wellbeing; she pays particular attention to the social factors that affect individual educational outcomes and East Asian educational systems.

Her studies related to education address the causes and consequences of high school tracking in Taiwan, sex segregation in Taiwan’s higher education system, and mechanisms through which education affects individual subjective well-being. She is currently studying how teachers impact students in the school systems on Taiwanese middle school education. Regarding family-related topics, she is focusing on the divorce trends in Taiwan, how parental marriage quality and divorce affect adolescents’ mental health and the cognitive development of only children.

Some of her research has been published in Social Science Research, Social Indicators Research, Population Research and Policy Review, Sociological Perspectives, Taiwanese Sociology (in Chinese), and Taiwanese Journal of Sociology (in Chinese).