Women's Employment in Japan and the Timing of Marriage and Childbirth

Abstract

This paper uses Japanese panel data to examine empirically the effect of changes in labour market conditions and income in the timing of marriage, childbirth and employment. The main ®ndings are that a high unemployment rate at the time of graduation tends to speed up the timing of marriage and childbirth, whereas an increase in the unemployment rate in the years after graduation delays the timing of marriage and childbirth. These results suggest that in Japan decisions are more likely to be based upon major changes such as those in employment opportunities than on¯uctuations in the wage rate. JEL Classi®cation Numbers: J1, J2.

Estimation of the labor participation and wage equation model of Japanese married women by the simultaneous maximum likelihood method

“…However, variables such as living with parents and the availability of day nurseries did not affect the probability of work. All the estimates of the H_INCOME (husband's income) were negative and significant except for those estimated by the probit MLE as shown in previous studies such as Higuchi (2001), Yamada (2002), andSasaki (2002). These results suggest that the decision to work among Japanese married women is strongly affected by social systems such as exemptions for spouses, pension, and other forms of social insurances.…”

“…As Higuchi (2001) pointed out, Japanese women who only graduated from high schools or junior high schools were more likely to start working again in their thirties and forties after they had left the labor market once. On the other hand, Japanese women with higher levels of education were inclined to continue working at one firm.…”

The Changing Role of Women’s Earnings in Marriage Formation in Japan

“…Japan used to be one of a few developed countries where Becker's economic independence hypothesis gained support by showing negative associations between women's economic prospects and marriage (Higuchi 2001;Retherford, Ogawa, and Matsukura 2001;Ono 2003;Raymo 2003;Raymo and Iwasawa 2005;Tsuya 2006Tsuya , 2009. In contrast, in Western countries, women's earnings relate positively, if at all, to marriage (Blossfeld and Huinink 1991;Santow and Bracher 1994;Bracher and Santow 1998;Oppenheimer and Lew 1995;Thornton, Axinn, and Teachman 1995; Goldstein and kenney 2001;Sweeney 2002).…”

“…While earlier studies show that marriage risks among female Japanese university graduates steeply increase when they reach their mid-20s (Tsuya and Mason 1995), more recent studies show that their lifetime probabilities of never marrying are estimated as being the highest among all educational levels (Retherford, Ogawa, and Matsukura 2001;Raymo 2003;Raymo and Iwasawa 2005;Tsuya 2006Tsuya , 2009. Panel studies of marriage further show that women with higher incomes are less likely to marry (Higuchi 2001;Ono 2003;Sakai 2009). These results are considered here as a confirmation of the economic independence hypothesis; that is, women with high earnings potential do not fit 116 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMy in the traditional form of marriage (Tsuya and Mason 1995;Raymo and Iwasawa 2005;Ono 2003;Raymo 2003).…”

Long-term effects of labor market conditions on family formation for Japanese youth

“…The current study is not the first to examine the effects of labor market conditions at entry to the labor market on marriage and fertility: Abe (1999), Higuchi and Abe (1999), and Higuchi (2001) investigate such effects using individual-level panel data and national-level labor market indices. They find that women who graduate from school in a year when labor demand is slack tend to marry and bear children earlier, while the contemporaneous unemployment rate delays marriage and childbearing.…”