Japanese Panel Survey Of Consumers Research Articles

Money management over the course of marriage: Parenthood, employment and household financial organization in Japan.

In Japan, differentiated gender expectations are strongly emphasized and Japanese wives shoulder the majority of the domestic work. Although previous research has examined the gendered division of paid and unpaid work in Japan, much less attention has been paid to household money management patterns among Japanese couples. Traditionally, Japanese women do the household financial organization, regardless of their employment status. Husbands transfer all of their income and other earnings to their wives and receive a monthly allowance as pocket money. We use data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), 1994-2019 waves, to construct fixed-effect models to investigate how parenthood, wife's employment and husband's relative income are associated with different money management systems in Japan. Our findings show that parenthood is positively associated with female money management systems, whereas in dual-earner couples, women are less likely to manage household money. The results suggest that female money management in Japan is positioned as part of the package of wife / mother / homemaker roles and is a "female" task rather than "male". The results also show that the applicability of Western money management typologies and theoretical frameworks is limited for the Japanese context.

Work–family policies and women’s job mobility: emerging divides in female workforce in Japan

ABSTRACT The impact of work–family policies on women’s employment must be considered in the institutional context wherein policies are introduced. This study examines the impact of introducing work–family policies on job exit and change experienced by 25–45-year-old women since the 1990s in the Japanese context. The past three decades are characterised by a deepened labour market duality, continued basic social welfare framework in which labour market position is pivotal for entitlement, and intensified normative familialism. Analyses of panel data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers show that with the development of work–family policies, women become less likely to leave their jobs. This phenomenon is, however, limited to women in regular employment. Mothers with pre-school-age children have not increased their labour market attachment. No change is noted in the tendency of women in regular employment being less likely to change their jobs. Results suggest that work–family policies have not only promoted women’s employment but also brought divides in the female labour force. Additionally, the results indicate the importance of focusing on institutional arrangements to understand how such divides are brought about.

Are Married Women Really Wealthier Than Unmarried Women? Evidence From Japan.

Using microdata from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, this article examines the relationship between marriage and wealth among women. By exploiting unique data on personal wealth, it also assesses whether the wealth effect of marriage differs depending on whether wealth is measured as household or personal wealth, an issue that very few studies have examined. When wealth is measured as equivalized household net worth, on the assumption that married couples share household resources equally, marriage is found to contribute to women's wealth holdings but only to their nonfinancial net worth; however, the results show signs that marriage also contributes to women's total net worth as marriage durations increase. By contrast, when wealth is measured as personal net worth based on the actual ownership of assets, marriage is found to be negatively and significantly associated with women's wealth holdings. These findings underscore the fact that Japanese women are potentially in a financially vulnerable position even after marriage, which is at least partly driven by married women's career disruptions arising from their family responsibilities.

Parity-specific motherhood penalties: Long-term impacts of childbirth on women's earnings in Japan.

The issue of motherhood earnings penalty has been well-documented in many Western countries. However, only a few studies discussed how earnings penalty evolves over time and varies across different parity of birth. Moreover, related research in non-Western developed countries is scant. This study contributes to the motherhood penalty literature by examining the long-term impacts (up to 10 years after childbirth) of the first and the second birth on women's employment, work hours, wage rates, and earnings in Japan. It proposes a novel research design based on the event-study approach and fixed effects regressions to quantify the dynamic effects of motherhood resulted from two consecutive birth transitions. Drawing on longitudinal data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (from 1993 to 2015), our results show that both the first and the second birth trigger short-term earnings penalties by causing a considerable employment slump upon pregnancy. In the long run, while women's employment rates recover, work hours and wage rates remain significantly lower than their pre-pregnancy level, leading to the long-term earnings penalty. More importantly, the long-term negative impacts of childbirth on labor supply and wage rates result mostly from women's first-time rather than the second-time birth transition in Japan. These findings imply that motherhood in Japan imposes long-term penalties on women's earnings, primarily by depressing maternal labor supply after their first-time motherhood transition.

Marriage Stability and Private Versus Shared Expenditures Within Families: Evidence from Japanese Families

Previous studies have identified the negative impacts of an increase in the proportion of a wife’s income to the couple’s combined income, as well as of the gap in housework/childcare, on the stability of a marriage, increasing the likelihood of divorce. However, the intrahousehold mechanism is still inconclusive in terms of this issue. In the present study, we investigated a potential alternative mechanism, following the gender identity framework and the collective model and using longitudinal survey data from 1993 to 2015 from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC). The findings showed that an increase in a wife’s share of the couple income increased her relative bargaining power and had a significant influence on intrahousehold reallocations of income/time. These intrahousehold reallocations, in turn, had a negative impact on the stability of the marriage. In couples with high-income wives, the husbands transferred their incomes to their wives, and the wives undertook the majority of the housework. In other words, a higher housework burden among wives was associated with regular income transfers from husbands to wives. Meanwhile, despite increases in wives’ income shares, both husbands and wives contributed to the family through reallocations of income/time in order to maintain marriage stability.

Partial insurance in Japan

This study estimates the degree of the transmission of income shocks to consumption using the partial insurance model of Blundell et al. (2008) and data taken from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers that cover the recessions in the 2000s. The analysis finds that the transmission of permanent income shocks to consumption was insured by half, whereas transitory income shocks were almost fully insured. Meanwhile, permanent income shocks statistically did not change over this period, whereas transitory income shocks did. These results suggest that the partial insurance model does not contradict observational changes in consumption and income inequality.

Intra-household Manageable Income and the Choice on Self or Other Expenditures

This paper focuses on the expenditures of heterosexual couples using the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers. A family’s income transfer information can help identify the division of resources. The results were calculated using Engle curves, and showed that an increase in resources led to an increase in both private expenditures and expenditures on others. In addition, they often spent different resources on themselves and others when they had different levels of income. On average, wives had fewer private expenditures than husbands. Moreover, husbands spent more on private expenditures when had fewer available resources and less when they had more resources.

Returns to Postgraduate Education in Japan

Using three household surveys, the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), the Working Person Survey (WPS), and the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), this study estimates the returns to postgraduate education in Japan, considering potential self-selection bias. To mitigate the bias, workers’ undergraduate majors, types of university, and level of cognitive skills are controlled for. These factors explain 6.3–29.2% of the postgraduate wage premium for women, but at most 10.9% for men. Even after controlling for them, the postgraduate wage premium remains positive and significant, ranging from 16.5 to 23.7% for men and 13.5–26.4% for women.

The Impact of Intra-household Bargaining Power on Happiness of Married Women: Evidence from Japan

This paper evaluates the correlation between intra-household bargaining power and the happiness of married women using Japanese longitudinal survey data (Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers: JPSC) from 1995 to 2013. The results suggest that when absolute income, relative household income, and other factors are constant, the income gap, wage gap and education gap between wife and husband negatively affect married Japanese women’s happiness. The proportion of the total household income or husband’s income controlled by the wife can positively affect married Japanese women’s happiness. The effects of intra-household bargaining power on happiness are greater for the working married women group than the housewife group.

The wall for mothers with first graders: availability of afterschool childcare and continuity of maternal labor supply in Japan

In Japan, the availability of afterschool childcare for young school children is quite limited, although many preschool children attend daycare centers. As a result, parents experience a sudden lack of formal childcare when their child starts school. This dearth of childcare services is notorious, and has been referred to as the “Wall for Mothers with First Graders”. To illustrate the quantitative impacts of the Wall, I compare the maternal labor supply between nuclear and three-generation households at the time of the firstborn child’s school entry. Since mothers from three-generation households generally substitute formal afterschool childcare with informal childcare provided by the grandparents, I hypothesize that the first child’s school entry mainly affects the labor supply of mothers from nuclear households. Using the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, a difference-in-differences/event-study analysis is applied to the sample of mothers whose firstborn child was in daycare as a preschooler. The overall findings are generally consistent with my hypothesis. First, the baseline result shows that the labor market participation rate decreases by 10.9 percentage points at the time of their firstborn child’s school entry among mothers from nuclear households compared with those from three-generation households. Second, the firstborn child’s school entry decreases his/her mother’s daily paid work by about half an hour and increases time allocated to housework and childcare by the same amount. Taken together, this study shows that the shortage of afterschool childcare among nuclear households interrupts maternal labor supply.

The Wall for Mothers with First Graders: Availability of Afterschool Childcare and Maternal Labor Supply in Japan

In Japan, the availability of afterschool childcare for young school children is quite limited, although many preschool children attend daycare centers. As a result, parents experience a sudden lack of formal childcare when their child starts school. This dearth of childcare services is notorious, and has been referred to as the “Wall for Mothers with First Graders. To illustrate the quantitative impacts of the wall, I compare the maternal labor supply between nuclear and three-generation households at the time of the firstborn child’s school entry. Since mothers from three-generation households generally substitute formal afterschool childcare with informal childcare provided by the grandparents, I hypothesize that the first child’s school entry mainly affects the labor supply of mothers from nuclear households. Using the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, a difference-in-differences analysis is applied to the sample of mothers whose firstborn child was in daycare as a preschooler. The overall findings are generally consistent with my hypothesis. First, the baseline result shows that the labor market participation rate decreases by 10.9 percentage points at the time of their firstborn child’s school entry among mothers from nuclear households compared with those from three-generation households. Second, the firstborn child’s school entry decreases his/her mother’s daily paid work by 0.65 hours and increases time allocated to housework and childcare by 0.68 hours. Taken together, this study shows that the shortage of afterschool childcare among nuclear households discourages maternal labor supply.

Effects of family budgeting responsibility on subjective health status: An empirical study of Japanese wives

ABSTRACTWe examine whether the decision-making power of Japanese wives affects their health status. Looking at cross-sectional data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC) conducted with women, we create a new measure for decision-making power based on participation in family budgeting. The data sample covers 1,306 married women aged 25 to 45 years in 2004. We find that Japanese wives are more likely to report good health when they have more responsibility than their husbands for household budgeting. Additionally, having more education or being fully employed increased the probability of reporting “good health” by more than six percentage points.

Marriage and Women's Health in Japan

In this study, we evaluate alternative hypotheses about the potentially harmful or beneficial effects of marriage on women's health and examine the factors underlying observed relationships between marriage and health. Using data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, an annual survey of a nationally representative sample of Japanese women (N = 1,610), our study advances current scholarship on marriage and health by focusing on a context characterized by a high degree of gender inequality. Results from models employing different approaches to the potential role of health-related selection into marriage consistently indicate that marriage is associated with better mental and physical health and that the lower levels of employment among married women play an important role in explaining this relationship. Our findings highlight the importance of considering how the specific pathways linking marriage and health may vary across societies with different gender and institutional contexts.

Social norms, gender identity, and high-earning wives’ housework behavior in Japan: An identity economics framework

ABSTRACTThis article takes an identity economics perspective to examine the housework behavior of Japanese wives of couples where both spouses work full-time, based on panel data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers in 2000–2008. First, we show that Japanese wives are reluctant to reduce their housework time even when they out-earn their husbands. Second, there is no negative linear relationship between wives’ absolute income and the time they allocate to unpaid work. Last, we find no evidence that low-earning wives reduce their time spent on housework more rapidly than high-earning wives in Japan.

Effects of Fatherhood on Male Wage and Labor Supply in Japan

Abstract Using data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC) for the period 1994–2007, I examine the effect of childbirth on fathers’ wage rates and labor supply in Japan. I also compare the effects of fatherhood between different cohorts by dividing the JPSC sample into two birth-year cohorts (those born in or before 1960 and those born after 1960). The results show that the birth of children significantly increases hourly wage rates by 2.3% and annual work by 69 hours. Comparing these results to those of studies based in the United States and Germany shows that while the effect of childbirth on the Japanese male labor supply is large, it is relatively small on wage rates. The study also shows that childbirth has different impacts on labor market outcomes for the two cohorts. In the early cohort, the birth of children significantly increases wage rates, but has no significant effect on the labor supply. On the contrary, for the later cohort, the birth of children does not increase wage rates and there is a significant increase in the labor supply. Finally, I examine how the gender difference of children impacts labor market outcomes. Although its impact is not so large, the birth of sons has a larger effect than the birth of daughters.

The Relationship Between Life Satisfaction Among Wives and Financial Preparedness of Households in Japan

The wealth gap between the rich and poor is widening and contributing to Japan’s shrinking middle class. This study examined concerns about the future and life satisfaction and their association with household financial preparedness (e.g., savings, investments, life insurance) among married women in Japan. Double-hurdle models assessed the probability of having savings and the amount of these savings, using the sample from the 2006 Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (n = 1,206). Supporting earlier works from several other countries, concerns about the future were positively associated with the probability of having supplemental life insurance. Moreover, life satisfaction levels were positively associated with the probabilities of having savings, investments, and supplemental life insurance and with the amount of the investments. The findings suggest economic inequalities among women could widen in the future, as those who have and are expecting to have more financial resources are more likely to be prepared for future financial needs than those who do not.

Wage, income and consumption inequality in Japan, 1981–2008: From boom to lost decades

In this paper we document the main features of the distributions of wages, earnings, consumption and wealth in Japan since the early 1980s using four main data sources: the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (BSWS), the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES), the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure (NSFIE) and the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC). We present an empirical analysis of inequality that specifically considers the path from individual wages and earnings, to household earnings, after-tax income, and finally consumption. We find that household earnings inequality rose substantially over this period. This rise is made up of two distinct episodes: from 1981 to 1996 all incomes rose, but they rose faster at higher percentiles; from 1996 to 2008 incomes above the 50th percentile remained flat but they fell at and below the 50th percentile. Inequality in disposable income and in consumption also rose over this period but to a lesser extent, suggesting taxes and transfers as well as insurance channels available to households helped to insulate household consumption from shocks to wages. We find the same pattern in inequality trends when we look over the life cycle of households as we do over time in the economy. Additionally we find that there are notable differences in the inequality trends for wages and hours between men and women over this period.

How does the first job matter for an individual’s career life in Japan?

Exploiting annual information on the work status of female workers from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), this paper examines how an individual’s job status immediately after graduation, referred to as “first job,” matters for his/her future job career. Using the ratio of regular employees in the labor force in the year preceding an individual’s graduation as an instrument for the first-job status (i.e., regular job or not), we confirm that even for women, whose retention rates are lower than those of men because of marriage and childbirth, individuals’ first-job status has a significant effect on their job status in the future. We further find that the effect gradually declines over the years and effectively disappears around 10years after graduation. Finally, we find that the first-job effect is reversible: no negative effect of failing to obtain a regular job at graduation is observed if an individual can secure regular employment within a reasonable time period after graduation.

Goal Oriented Rational Behavior on Paid Holidays for Female Workers

Many Japanese workers do not use all of the paid holidays they are entitled to take. One reason is the economic significance of not using paid holidays, that not taking paid holidays leads to an increase in future income. Although it is pointed out that in theory taking paid holidays adversely influences future income in the long run, are disparities in compensation really occurring in the actual labor market? To test this proposition, this paper makes a dynamic empirical analysis with regard to disparities in future income as a result of using paid holidays using the data on individuals available in the “Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC)” conducted by the Institute for Research on Household Economics. The survey base includes both males and females but the male case was not analyzed. As a result of the analysis, it was found that there was no compensation disadvantage arising from the number of paid holidays taken.

Deconstructing the hedonic treadmill: Is happiness autoregressive?

Affective habituation is well-documented in social sciences: people seem to adapt to many life events, ranging from lottery windfalls to terminal illnesses. A group of studies have tried to measure habituation by seeing how lagged values of life events affect present happiness. We propose an additional adaptation channel: current happiness may depend directly on past happiness, which amounts to assessing whether happiness is autoregressive. We run dynamic happiness regressions using individual-level panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, the British Household Panel Survey and the Swiss Household Panel. As in previous studies, the coefficients on lagged events (e.g., becoming unemployed, getting married) suggest strong habituation. However, all the econometric models suggest that the coefficient on lagged happiness is positive and significant. We discuss whether this may be evidence of happiness having an inertial force (besides the usual habituation channel).