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This paper examines the behavioural response of households to wealth transfer taxation using household survey data from Japan, with particular attention being paid to the implications of different bequest motives that households may have. The data reveal that relatively few households plan to reallocate the newly taxable amount of wealth to their own consumption or inter vivos transfers in response to the recent lowering of the basic deduction of the inheritance tax. Our analysis shows that this partly reflects the fact that a relatively large share of households have no or a weak bequest motive in Japan. However, our estimation results also suggest that parents with an altruistic bequest motive are more likely to avoid an increase in their children's tax bill by reallocating the newly taxable amount of wealth to inter vivos transfers than those with no or a weak bequest motive. By contrast, parents with an exchange bequest motive are more likely to respond to the tax reform by reallocating the newly taxable amount of wealth to their own consumption, though they seem to exhibit a similar response to those with an altruistic bequest motive in some cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment using microdata for Japan. By exploiting unique information on whether children have ever given up schooling for financial reasons and, if they have, which level of schooling they have forgone, it assesses the role of borrowing constraints in determining intergenerational educational mobility in a more direct manner than previous attempts. Despite a steady increase in the level of educational attainment, the regression results indicate the absence of an increase in intergenerational educational mobility in postwar Japan. Moreover, while borrowing constraints used to play a significant role in lowering intergenerational educational mobility, they no longer seem to matter for the youngest cohort examined in this paper. Instead, our analysis shows that the relative importance of adolescent academic ability for children's educational attainment has increased in recent years, thereby underlining the increasing importance of earlier investments in children's human capital for their subsequent academic advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the implications of providing care to elderly parents for adult children's retirement plans using micro data from a Japanese survey. We find no significant effect of caregiving on family caregivers’ planned retirement age if we do not take into account caregiving intensity but find a negative and significant effect on retirement plans for intensive caregivers, particularly among women. These findings suggest that relying on family members to provide elderly care can pose a serious challenge to the ongoing efforts of the government to promote the labor supply of women and the elderly as a way of addressing the shrinkage of the working‐age population in Japan. The estimation results suggest that ensuring access to formal care services can help family members reconcile their paid work with caregiving requirements, thereby alleviating the adverse effect of caregiving on their retirement plans. The results also suggest that the financial burden of formal care services could require caregivers to postpone retirement in some cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the determinants of happiness inequality in Japan using unique data from the “Preference Parameters Study” of Osaka University, a nationally representative survey conducted in Japan. By estimating Recentered Influence Function regressions, we find that household income has a negative and significant effect on happiness inequality, as found for other advanced economies, though people’s perception of their relative standing in the income spectrum also matters for the dispersion of happiness. Moreover, the regression results show that the insecurity faced by people about their jobs and life after retirement is also significantly associated with the widening of happiness inequality. Such findings are cause for grave concern given that the share of irregular jobs, which tend to be low paid and insecure, in total employment significantly increased in Japan during the Lost Two Decades and that this increasing trend has not yet been reversed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using microdata from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, this article examines the relationship between marriage and wealth among women. By exploiting unique data on personal wealth, it also assesses whether the wealth effect of marriage differs depending on whether wealth is measured as household or personal wealth, an issue that very few studies have examined. When wealth is measured as equivalized household net worth, on the assumption that married couples share household resources equally, marriage is found to contribute to women's wealth holdings but only to their nonfinancial net worth; however, the results show signs that marriage also contributes to women's total net worth as marriage durations increase. By contrast, when wealth is measured as personal net worth based on the actual ownership of assets, marriage is found to be negatively and significantly associated with women's wealth holdings. These findings underscore the fact that Japanese women are potentially in a financially vulnerable position even after marriage, which is at least partly driven by married women's career disruptions arising from their family responsibilities., (Copyright © 2022 The Author.)