Part-Time Work vs. Full-Time Work of Married Women in Japan (original) (raw)

Part-time Employment of Married Women and Fertility in Urban Japan

1984

Previous studies of female labor force participation in Japan often show that the estimates of female wage rates are negative" in their single-equation models of labor supply. Based on the common belief that the substitution effect dominates the income effect for female labor supply, to disentangle the problem of the inconsistency is, therefore, necessary for the purpose of predicting the behavior of female labor supply and for guiding policy actions. Xn this paper, we have estimated a logit model of married women's part-time employment and a fertility equation in the context of a simultaneous-equation model. By specifically differentiating part-time employed married women from full-time employed married women, we find that the structural coefficients of the part-time labor supply are significantly different from those of the full-time labor supply in terms of elasticity. However, contrary to the result of married women's full-time employment, we find little interdependency between married women's decisions to work as part-time employees and their fertility in urban Japan.

Labor Supply of Japanese Married Women: Sensitivity Analysis and a New Estimate

We conduct a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature on the labor supply of Japanese married women using the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers. We first conduct a detailed sensitivity analysis of the estimates of the wage elasticity to various economic and statistical assumptions used in the past studies. We then provide a new estimate of the labor supply model that simultaneously controls for wage endogeneity, sample selection into labor force as well as the possibly endogenous selection between different segments of the non-linear and often discontinuous budget constraint in a joint maximum likelihood estimation. We reject the assumption of wage exogeneity. The wife's labor market experience appears to be a valid excluded instrument, which validates most of the model specifications in the prior literature. The assumption of no-sample selection bias is rejected. Our new estimate shows that there are notable differences in the labor supply behavior of women who choose...

A Multinominal Logistic Approach to the Labor Force Behavior of JapaneseMarried Women

1985

Using a multanornial logistic approach, we analyze the interdependencies among the labor force participation decisions of married women an Japan. These decisions are working part-tame, working full-time, being unemployed (in the labor market but unable to find work), and not participating. Our focus is on the interdependency between the decision to work part-time and the decision to work full-time. Our results indicate that married women working full-time view part-time work as a good substitute, but the reverse is not observed. We also obtain estimates of the own-wage elasticity for both forms of participation and find that part-time labor force particicipation of Japanese married women is substantially more elastic than that of their full-time counterparts. These findings reinforce the view that married women in Japan with loose ties to the labor market are quite responsive to changes in the returns to work.

Gender and part-time work in Japan

Equal Opportunities International, 2002

Part-time work in Japan, as in other countries, is increasing as a form of paid work. There are however significant differences developing out of Japan's gender contract. Emp loyers have created a gendered employment strategy which has been supported by governments, through social welfare policies and legislation, and the mainstream enterprise union movement which has supported categorisations of part-time workers as 'auxilliary' despite their importance at the workplace. An analysis of one national supermarket chain indicates that part-time work as it is constructed in Japan does not challenge the gendered division of labour but seeks to lock women into the secondary labour market.

Effects of Husband's Education and Family Structure on Labor Force Participation and Married Japanese Women's Earnings

Japanese Economy, 2011

This paper investigates the effects of a husband's education, family structure, co-residence with parents or in-laws, and childcare, on labor supply and earnings among married Japanese women between 2000 and 2002. Whereas educated husbands reduce the labor supply of wives, they tend to improve productivity and earnings of the wives once they participate in the labor market. Moreover, our analysis provides evidence of specific division of labor within a household, through which a wife's mother or mother-in-law helps her participate in the labor market, while her father or father-in-law does not affect her labor participation.

Labor Market Deregulation and Female Employment: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Japan

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014

Labor Market Deregulation and Female Employment: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Japan * This paper provides novel evidence on the causal effect on female employment of labor market deregulation by using the 1985 amendments to the Labor Standards Law (LSL) in Japan as a natural experiment. The original LSL of 1947 prohibited women from working overtime exceeding two hours a day; six hours a week; and 150 hours a year. The 1985 amendments exempted a variety of occupations and industries from such overtime restriction on women. We first define "jobs" using an industry by occupation matrix. For each job (close to 5,000 jobs in total), we carefully identify whether or not it was made exempt from the overtime restriction on women by the 1985 amendments. Applying a difference-indifference model to census data, we find a statistically significant and economically meaningful impact on female employment of this particular piece of labor market deregulation. Furthermore the 1985 treatment is found to have a lasting and growing impact on female employment. Our finding is consistent with the recent literature that points to the importance of paying particular attention to the issues surrounding working hours when policymakers design public policy to promote female employment.

The Relationship Between the Effects of a Wife’s Education on her Husband’s Earnings and her Labor Participation: Japan in the period 2000 -2003

We analyze the effect of a wife's human capital on her husband's earnings, using individual-level data for Japan in the period 2000-2003. We find a positive association between a wife's education and her husband's earnings, which can be attributed to the assortative mating effect as well as the positive effect of an educated wife on her husband's productivity. We divide the sample into those couples with non-working wives and those with working wives, and also employ an estimation strategy proposed by Jepsen (2005), attempting to control for the assortative mating effect. Our regression analysis provides suggestive evidence that educated wives increase their husbands' productivity and earnings only when they are non-workers and have sufficient time to support their husbands.