We use micro data on young married households from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers in order to analyze the importance of borrowing constraints in Japan. We find (1) that 8 to 15 percent of young married Japanese households are borrowing-constrained, (2) that household assets and the...

Recent research has shown that low-income households have a higher probability of babies being born underweight, which is an indicator of poor health. The causes and effects of the weights of newborn babies need to be analyzed in Japan, where the proportion of low-weight babies is extremely high...

This paper studies how changes in extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefit affect the duration of unemployment. We investigate this question by exploiting not only strict age thresholds but also the pre-displacement tenure and the reason for separation from the previous job in the Japanese...

This paper estimates matching functions to measure search frictions in the Japanese labor market and presents determinants of search duration to explain the effect of unemployment benefits on a job seekerfs behavior. We employ administrative micro data that track the job search process of...

What do the Japanese think that social success is attributed to? Is success in life obtained by one's efforts or just by luck? This paper examines the Japanese formation of values on social success. The paper focuses on the effect of economic conditions around the time of graduation. We use the...

This study analyzes what adult children will do for their parents if they become frail and need long-term care. Descriptive statistics show that about 30 percent of adult children living separately from their parents provide long-term in-home care, which suggests that a significant number of...

This paper examines whether or not a prolonged unemployment period can raise the quality of job matching after unemployment. We focus on job tenure as an indicator of a good quality job match after unemployment. We match two sets of Japanese administrative data compiled by the public employment...