Living Arrangement and Mothers’ Employment in Japan

Year 2020, Volume: 20 Issue: 4, 319 - 331, 30.11.2020

Aysenur Aydınbakar

https://doi.org/10.21121/eab.772604

Abstract

This paper tests the effect of living arrangement on the probability of mothers’ employment
status in Japan using micro-data from a household survey. The analysis was conducted for
grandmothers by focusing on distinguishing between grandmother and in-law. The father being
the eldest son and the mother being the eldest daughter are used as instruments in bivariate
probit models. The findings show that co-residing or proximate-residing grandmother (-in-law)
increases the probability of mothers being in employment. That being said, Japanese mothers
still need to get help from grandmothers to work. Other important findings indicate that
mothers whose husbands are the eldest son tend to live with grandmother-in-law. This confirms
that the Japanese norm still stands in modern Japan.

Keywords

Living Arrangement, Grandmothers, Childcare, Eldest Daughter, Eldest Son, Labor Force, Japanese Norm

Thanks

I would like to thank Midori Wakabayashi, Kentaro Nakajima, Akira Hibiki, Yoko Ibuka, Colin McKenzie, Kei Sakata, Wataru Kureishi, Kıvılcım Metin Özcan, and two anonymous referees. I am grateful to the participants of Economics of the Family Workshop at Tohoku University in October 2017. I also thank National Family Research of Japan (NFRJ08) and the Information Center for Social Science Research on Japan, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo (SSJ Data Archive) for providing micro-data from the 2008 National Family Survey (Kazoku ni tsuiteno Zenkoku Chousa)(0817). I am thankful to the Turkish Ministry of National Education for support.

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