Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Health and Retirement Study, we provide a set of facts about vacation leave and its relationship to hours worked, hours constraints, wage rates, worker characteristics, spouse's vacation leave, labor market experience, job tenure, occupation, industry, and labor market conditions. We show that on average vacation time taken rises 1 to 1 with paid vacation but varies around it, that annual hours worked fall by about 1 full time week with every week of paid vacation, that the gap between time taken and time paid for is higher for women, union members, and government workers, that hourly wage rates have a strong positive relationship with paid vacation weeks both in the cross section and across jobs, and that nonwage compensation is positively related to vacation weeks. We provide evidence that vacation leave is determined by broad employer policy rather than by negotiation between the worker and firm. In particular, it is strongly related to job seniority but depends very little on labor market experience, and for job changers it is only weakly related to the amount of vacation on the previous job.

No abstract

This paper examines the effect of parents' social skills on children's sociability, using the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). This survey, like some other national surveys, lacks detailed information on parents; to remedy this deficiency, we construct a measure of parents' "sociability" skills based on their occupational characteristics from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). The sociability relationship varies across parents and children by gender, but remains statistically significant (especially between fathers and sons), even after controlling for a variety of other background characteristics.JEL Classification: J24; J62.

No abstract

This paper identifies sharp bounds on the mean treatment response and average treatment effect under the assumptions of both the concave-monotone treatment response (concave-MTR) and the monotone treatment selection (MTS). We use our bounds and the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to estimate mean returns to schooling. Our upper-bound estimates are substantially smaller than (i) estimates using only the concave-MTR assumption of Manski (1997), and (ii) estimates using only the MTR and MTS assumptions of Manski and Pepper (2000). Our upper-bound estimates fall in the range of the point estimates given in previous studies that assume linear wage functions.

No abstract

This paper examines whether and how the marital satisfaction of Japanese couples is related to the housework the spouse performs. For single-earner couples, both husbands and wives are more satisfied with the other spouse if the wife performs the greater share of the housework on weekdays. In dual-earner couples, both husbands and wives experience higher spousal satisfaction when the other spouse performs more housework on weekdays. Japanese dual-earner couples are unable to spend more time on housework, because wives are already performing a significant share of housework on weekdays while husbands are working long hours.JEL Classification: J12, J22

Japan experienced increases in labor force participation (LFP) of the elderly in recent years, as have other advanced countries. In the present study, we overview the employment trend of the elderly in Japan, and examine what factors have contributed to its increase since the early 2000s. Improved health and longevity, increasing education levels, and a shift towards less physically demanding jobs have allowed the elderly to stay longer in the labor force. However, elderly employment rebound and its timing are more closely linked to changes in social security incentives, especially increases in the eligibility age for public pension benefits. More broadly, reduced generosity in social security programs since the mid-1980s has been a key driver of the long-term trend change in elderly employment. A series of social security reforms have helped utilize the elderly's potential work capacity, accumulated due to improving health conditions and other favorable factors for LFP in the elderly.