Japanese Households Research Articles

Unit Energy Prices for Japanese Households from 1960 to 2007

Unit Energy Prices for Japanese Households from 1960 to 2007

The gender-asymmetric effect of working mothers on children's education: Evidence from Japan

In this paper, I study how maternal employment affects the educational attainment of children. Using Japanese household data, I find that part-time maternal employment and self-employment have negative effects on the educational attainment of both sons and daughters. However, I find that full-time maternal employment has a negative effect only on sons . Moreover, I find that maternal employment status is transmitted to daughters. This gender-asymmetric effect of working mothers on children and the transmission of employment status from mothers to daughters jointly provide supporting evidence for a role model effect of full-time maternal employment on daughters. J. Japanese Int. Economies 22 (4) (2008) 586–604.

Child restraint seat use behavior and attitude among Japanese mothers

Objectives The purpose of the study was to assess associations between child restraint seat use and attitudes among Japanese mothers. Materials and methods Mothers whose children were under 6 years of age were recruited through 11 kindergartens located in Kanagawa prefecture, Japan. Questions were developed based on the Health Belief Model and the Theory of Reasoned Action. Past use and future intentions to use, perceived risk of injury, knowledge of safety, attitudes toward use, subjective norms, and safety values related to safety seats were asked. Results A total of 552 complete questionnaires was obtained. Of 500 car owning households, 54.2% used child restraint seats inconsistently on short drives, and 36.4% did so on long drives. Three variables were associated with inconsistent use on short drives: frequent child resistance to sitting in a restraint seat; mothers’ feeling hassled by child restraint seat use; and, mothers’ agreement with the lack of need to use a restraint seat when another adult is in a car. Two variables were associated with inconsistent use on long drives: lower subjective norm of husband and frequent child resistance. Conclusions In-car environmental modification and parent education need to be considered to increase child restraint seat use among Japanese households.

An empirical study on the rebound effect considering capital costs

Technological progress is one of the means of reducing energy usage and carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions. However, this reduction, in turn, leads to a reduction in the real cost of energy services per unit, which results in an increase in the demand for energy services. Therefore, a reduction in the anticipated CO 2 emissions caused by a technological improvement might be partially offset in response to the cost reduction. Previous studies have referred to this effect as the “rebound effect.” A large amount of empirical evidence on the rebound effect exists; however, most of these studies assume an exogenous improvement in energy efficiency, and thus, capital costs that may decrease the magnitude of the rebound effect are not taken into account expressly. This paper extends the scope of the research conducted by Brannlund et al. [Brannlund, R., Ghalwash, T., Nordstrom, J., 2007. Increased energy efficiency and the rebound effect: effects on consumption and emissions. Energy Economics 29, 1–17] in terms of two aspects: (i) considering capital costs explicitly as additional capital costs and (ii) adapting an iterating procedure, and estimating the rebound effect, using Japanese household data. As a result of our empirical analysis, we conclude that the rebound is approximately 27%. However, we also find that ignoring additional capital costs leads to an increase in the rebound effect. In the case of Japanese households, the magnitude of the rebound effect increases to approximately 115%. Moreover, our simulation study shows that only a one-time iteration of Brannlund et al. [Brannlund, R., Ghalwash, T., Nordstrom, J., 2007. Increased energy efficiency and the rebound effect: effects on consumption and emissions. Energy Economics 29, 1–17] may lead to a biased result.

Household Enumeration in National Discourse

Enumeration, even the contemporary census, cannot be characterized as neutral and objective data collection; official categories both shape and are shaped by national cultures. This article examines the forms, laws, and procedures of Japanese household registration (koseki) and national censuses in three cases from the modern period (1868 to post-World War II). Each case isolates a particular time period to show how broad political cultures, such as Westernization, the development of state welfare, and democratization, were codified or reflected discursively in enumerative programs. In each case, categories shifted the substantive and practical meanings of individuals in families and of household heads in relation to the state. In the early Meiji period (1868-1912), an aristocratic, head-centric social order was imposed on all classes through household registration. By the late Meiji and through the Taisho (1912-36) and early Showa periods (1936-89), census categories reflected a new household model based on economic and spatial relations. In the reconstruction period following World War II, the household register embodied the dramatic changes to the civil code that established equality of sexes and the nuclear family as the fundamental social unit. By the 1960s, however, census forms reflected a return of national cultural discourse to hierarchical, extended-stem family households.

THE DETERMINANTS OF JAPAN'S SAVING RATE: THE IMPACT OF THE AGE STRUCTURE OF THE POPULATION AND OTHER FACTORS

In this paper, I analyze the determinants of saving in Japan using national income accounts data for the 1955-87 period. My results suggest that the age structure of the popu lationis the primary determinant of both trends over time in Japan's saving rate and the high level thereof relative to the other developed countries and that Japan's saving rate can be expected to decline sharply due to the rapid increase in the ratio of the aged population to the working-age population. The level and rate of growth of income, wealth, (in the case of private and national saving) the unemployment rate, and (in the case of household saving) inflation are also found to influence the level of saving in Japan, and Japanese households are found to see through the corporate veil to some extent but not through the government veil.

Food consumption and demographics in Japan: Implications for an aging population

AbstractThis study estimates a cross‐sectional model based on the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) to examine the determinants of food consumption patterns in Japan over life‐cycle periods. The test of structural changes, the analysis of the effects of demographic characteristics, and the estimation of expenditure and price elasticities are conducted from a random sample of 1,281 households from a Japanese household survey in 1997. Results show that each economic or noneconomic factor has a different impact on food consumption over a lifetime. Changes in consumption of some food groups can be explained by price and income effects where others can be explained by demographic characteristics. Financial constraint is not binding and residential location is likely to have little or no impact on predicting consumers' food choices at different periods of their lives. Other key factors that affect consumption pattern include family size, number of children, lifestyle, and health concern. [EconLit citations: C310, D120, D910.] © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 23: 529–551, 2007.

Japanese Housing Tenure Choice and Welfare Implications after the Revision of the Tenant Protection Law

A new mode of housing tenure in Japan, rental housing with fixed rental terms, was introduced in March 2000 with the revision of the Japanese Tenant Protection Law. This paper examines the implications of this new system by analyzing the determinants of the choices by households among the three types of housing tenure in Japan: owned housing, general rental housing, and rental housing with fixed rental terms, and calculates the estimated compensating variation. Our micro-data is based on the three waves of Japanese household longitudinal data (Keio Household Panel Survey, KHPS) covering all of Japan. The difference between general rental housing and rental housing with fixed rental terms is reflected in the length of the contract term and the level of rent. We carefully eliminate potential sample selection bias introduced to the conditional logit housing tenure choice model through the estimation of the hedonic price regression of each housing tenure alternative. We find that households with a smaller number of family members, those who moved from outside the local housing market, those headed by an unmarried household head, and those with plans to own a house in the near future tend to select rental housing with fixed rental terms. The estimated mean compensating variation by introducing rental housing with fixed rental terms for all households selecting that tenure is 1,205 JPY per month or 1.96% of their monthly rent. Moreover, younger and/or lower income households derived the greatest benefit from the revised law in the form of lower rents.

Comparing heterogeneous consumption in U.S. and Japanese meat and fish demand

AbstractThis article uses national, quarterly data to conduct an empirical analysis of pre‐committed meat and fish demand by U.S. and Japanese households using the generalized almost ideal demand system (GAIDS). Pre‐committed demand represents the component of demand that is insensitive to both income and price adjustments. U.S. consumers are found to hold significant positive pre‐committed demand for beef and pork, while Japanese consumers appear to possess significant, positive pre‐committed demand for beef and fish. This provides evidence to partially explain observed differences in Japanese and U.S. consumer reactions to nonprice and nonincome effects in beef, pork, poultry, and fish. In addition, based on in‐ and out‐of‐sample performance, the more general GAIDS is preferred to the almost ideal demand system (AIDS) for both the U.S. and Japanese demand systems. Results lend to improved demand modeling efforts and more complete understanding of true market forces at hand in meat and fish markets for these culturally diverse consumer groups.

Testing Unitary Models of Labor Supply on Decision-Making Systems: Evidence from Japan

This study aims to test whether unitary models are consistent with Japanese household behavior. The methodology uses information regarding household decision-making systems to test unitary models. The method used in this study differs from those used in previous literatures. Unitary models are categorized into three types. First, a dictatorial family member in a household decides the household resource allocation based on his/her utility function. Second, all the family members have the same utility functions. Third, all the family members have different utility functions but they approve of a household utility function that represents the sum of their respective utility functions using the exogenous welfare weight. Some Japanese surveys show that the first category is not realistic. Therefore, this study considers the second and third types. This method aims to interpret the type of decision-making system selected by households as a proxy variable for the welfare weight. When controlling for individual and household characteristics, if the differences in the decision-making systems between households affect the distributions in household resource allocation, it can be concluded that one family member's preference is not similar to another's. Therefore, the second type is rejected. If the decision-making systems are endogenously determined by the extra-household environmental parameters (EEPs), it is valid to interpret that the distribution of the decision-making power is a proxy variable for the endogenous welfare weight. Therefore, the third type is rejected. The estimation strategy is used to consider the selectivity bias. In case individuals with a specific characteristic all tend to select a specific decision-making system, the effect of this decision-making system on the household resource allocation should be estimated independently from the effect of the characteristic on the allocation. If the effect of the decision-making system is not independently estimated, the estimation will include selectivity bias. In order to exclude the bias, this study employs the treatment effect model provided by Barnow, Cain, and Goldberger (1980). The analysis uses micro data from the 2000 and 2001 Japanese General Social Survey (JGSS), which is a nationwide cross-sectional survey; the analysis focuses on the data of two earner couples. The estimation results reveal that in a household wherein the wife is the principal decision-maker, the husband works 15% more and the wife works 59% less than is the case in a household that adopts a different decision-making system. The effect of the household decision-making system on labor supply is consistent with the implications derived from both the collective and Nash bargaining models. Further, the variables regarded as the EEPs (husband's and wife's wage rates, the proxy variable for nonwage income, health conditions) affect the type of decision-making system that the household selects. In particular, it is found that a spouse who is healthy and has the ability to earn a high income tends to have strong decision-making power in the household. These two results show that the unitary model is rejected, and the family members' decision-making power shows the property of endogenous welfare weight assumed by both the collective and Nash bargaining models.

Identifying common features among household consumption patterns optimized to minimize specific environmental burdens

This study seeks to find common features in a set of simulated Japanese household consumption patterns, each of which was optimized to reduce a particular type of environmental burden. To this end an input–output system comprising some 500 commodity and fixed capital formation sectors was formulated that relates Japanese household consumption of these commodities to the generation of 13 types of environmental burden, clustered in 6 key problem areas. Based on this system a linear programming model was developed and was used to compute a set of 13 household consumption patterns optimized for minimizing each of the environmental burdens in turn. Each of these singly optimized patterns was then characterized as to how it impacts on the magnitude of the other 12 environmental burdens. By examining the commonalties and differences among these optimal patterns, we then classified consumer commodities into 3 types, providing a simple indicator with which to steer towards consumption patterns with less environmental impact than today's.

Housing Finance Arrangements, Wealth Positioning and Housing Consumption in Japan: An Analysis of Built-for-sale Homeowners

Home purchase is financed through equity and debt. Housing finance arrangements require initial downpayments and impose monthly repayments. Similar to many countries, Japanese households accumulate savings out of their current income and receive private transfers from parents or relatives. From the survey conducted by the Ministry of Land, Transportation and Infrastructure from 1992 to 2000, the paper analyses the time spell until built-for sale homebuyers have amassed sufficient equity to meet the downpayment requirement. For the first-time buyers, private aid in form of cash was the dominant component of equity besides own savings. The innovative feature of our paper is to categorize the households into four classes of positive versus negative excess savings and positive versus negative excess “luck” as other equity sources including private transfers get termed here. For each category we estimate the duration of the accumulation process, and perform a sensitivity analysis that compares the spells under varying amounts of GHLC-loans with other types of mortgages. Since GHLC-loans are means-tested, they can effectively counteract the regressive effects arising from income; but as we will show they cannot really speed up the access in favour of the poorer strata. This finding sheds light on a growing wealth disparity that causes self-selection in ownership access.

Simple Indicator To Identify the Environmental Soundness of Growth of Consumption and Technology: “Eco-velocity of Consumption”

Today's material welfare has been achieved at the expense of consumption of finite resources and generation of environmental burdens. Over the past few decades the volume of global consumption has grown dramatically, while at the same time technological advances have enabled products with greater efficiencies. These two directions of change, consumption growth and technological advance, are the foci of the present paper. Using quantitative measures for these two factors, we define a new indicator, "eco-velocity of consumption", analogous to velocity in physics. The indicator not only identifies the environmental soundness of consumption growth and technological advance but also indicates whether and to what extent our society is shifting toward sustainable consumption. This study demonstrates the practicability of the indicator through a case study in which we calculate the eco-velocities of Japanese household consumption in 2 years: 1995 and 2000. The rate of technological advance during the periods concerned is quantified in terms of the embodied carbon dioxide emission per yen of product. The results show that the current growth rate of Japanese household consumption is greater than the rate of technological advance to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions. The eco-velocities at the level of individual commodity groups are also examined, and the sources of changes in eco-velocity for each commodity are identified using structural decomposition analysis.

モデルメニューによる日本の食事のLC-CO<sub>2</sub>評価

モデルメニューによる日本の食事のLC-CO<sub>2</sub>評価

Estimation of the Rebound Effects caused by an Improvement in Energy Efficiency: Japanese Household Consumption and Emission

Estimation of the Rebound Effects caused by an Improvement in Energy Efficiency: Japanese Household Consumption and Emission

Diversification Benefits of Japanese Real Estate Over the Last Four Decades

This paper studies the benefits of diversifying into real estate and other assets that typify the wealth held by Japanese investors. We examine movements in mean variance frontiers by employing spanning tests to assess the statistical significance of frontier shifts. We also investigate the impact of shifts in mean variance frontiers before and after the precipitous decline in Japanese real estate and stock market values that began in 1990. Spanning tests show that real estate, short and long-term bonds, and Japanese equity provide significant diversification benefits. We find that mean variance frontiers shift after 1990. Statistically significant shifts are also economically important as measured by Sharpe ratio changes. Although significant, the portfolio weights on Japanese real estate are relatively small compared to their composition found in surveys of Japanese household wealth.

Consumption behavior, asset returns, and risk aversion: Evidence from the Japanese household survey

We estimate both a limited participation model by [Mankiw, N.G., Zeldes, S.P., 1991. The consumption of stock holders and non-stock holders. Journal of Financial Economics 29, 97–112] and a persistent income shock model by [Constantinides, G.M., Duffie, D., 1996. Asset pricing with heterogeneous consumers. Journal of Political Economy 104, 219–240]. This is the first paper to use Japanese income-decile consumption survey data to test the equity premium puzzle. We find that the risk aversion coefficients for higher income level households who own larger equity positions are substantially smaller than those for the representative consumer. We conclude that the equity premium puzzle is partly resolved for Japan by the limited participation model, but not by the persistent income shock model.

Determinants of Income Differentials: Comparing Asians with Whites and Blacks

Census 2000 data are used to examine the determinants of income level of six Asian groups as compared with whites, the majority group, and blacks, another minority group. Results of descriptive and multivariate analysis lend support to both human capital investment and structural barriers as explanation for income differentials among the various racial groups. All else equal, Asian Indians did not have significantly different income levels as compared with white, whereas Chinese, Filipinos, Korean and Vietnamese had significantly less household income than whites and Japanese households had significantly more. All Asian groups had significantly more household income than black households.

The impact of smoke-free workplace policies on smoking behaviour in Japan

The aim of this study is to quantify the effect of a smoke-free workplace policy on smoking decision, smokers’ cigarette consumption, and smoking cessation. The data used in the analysis were gathered from the original Japanese household surveys of 2001. A two-part model was estimated for all workers during the survey period and probit model and difference-in-differences for smokers at workplaces without the smoke-free policy at the time of hiring. The results suggest that total smoking prohibition or a separation of smoking areas reduces smoking prevalence and smokers’ cigarette consumption and causes smokers to quit smoking.

Do borrowing constraints matter? An analysis of why the permanent income hypothesis does not apply in Japan

We use micro data on young married households from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers in order to analyze the importance of borrowing constraints in Japan. We find (1) that 8–15 percent of young married Japanese households are borrowing-constrained, (2) that household assets and the husband's educational attainment are the most important determinants of whether or not a household is borrowing-constrained, and (3) that the Euler equation implication is rejected for both the full sample and for the subsample of unconstrained households. These results suggest that the life cycle/permanent income hypothesis does not apply in Japan and that the presence of borrowing constraints is not the main reason why it does not apply.