Using panel data from two surveys in Japan and Europe, we examine the comparability of the self-rated health of the middle-aged and elderly across Japan and the European countries and the survey periods. We find that a person’s own health is evaluated on different standards (thresholds) across...

This paper explores the public pension claiming behavior of the Japanese. First, we perform financial simulations and estimate the expected utility, depicting the typical patterns of pension benefits over a life cycle. We show that the optimal retirement age depends on the beneficiaries’...

We examine how social security programs have affected the labor force participation (LFP) of the elderly over the past forty years in Japan. Using publicly available data, we construct forwardlooking incentive measures for inducing retirement, to ascertain the actual changes in the generosity of...

This paper examines whether social security programs induce a withdrawal of the elderly from the labor force and create jobs for the young in Japan. The key messages are summarized as follows. First, our historical overview suggests that young unemployment issues have not motivated social...

Evidence on the effect of the social security earnings test on the labor supply of the elderly continues to be mixed. We utilize micro-level data compiled by the Japanese government in order to examine the labor supply effect for those aged 65-69 before and after two major reforms of the social...

The interval in time between leaving a career job and exit from the labor force is especially long for Japanese employees and separation from the career job often takes place due to mandatory retirement in Japan. Using micro-level data compiled by the Japanese Government, we examine determinants...

Based on a simple overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility, we show that the effectiveness of social security reform and childcare support depends much on the openness of the economy, altruism, and initial fertility. For example, introducing a child allowance, which is often...

This paper investigates how social security redistributes lifetime income within the same generation in Japan, based on data from the Survey on the Redistribution of Income. The progressivity of Japan's public pension program appears to be much more limited on a lifetime basis than on an annual...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors that would affect the married couple's decision to coreside with their parents and a wife's decision to work in Japan, explicitly considering the simultaneous structure of these two decisions. Unlike preceding studies, we distinguish...

This paper examines an ideal pension system that would prevent an increase in net pension liabilities and redress intergenerational inequalities. The direction of pension system reform that this paper proposes is to limit the amount of pension benefits to the sum of premiums, state...