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本稿は、1970 年以降、日本において住宅ローンの供給が大幅に拡大したことを示し、それによって、日本の家計がどのようなメリット・デメリットを受けたのか、また住宅ローンの供給拡大は総合的に日本の家計にとって良いことだったのか否かについて検証する。一方では、住宅ローンの供給拡大は住宅購入を容易にしたことで、より若い年齢での住宅購入を可能にし、家賃地代の負担を軽減させたが、他方では、家計の住宅ローン返済の負担を増加させ、これにより家計の非住宅消費を抑制し、金融資産保有額の増加率を引き下げたことが示された。これまでは、メリットがデメリットを上回り、住宅ローンの供給拡大は日本の家計の厚生を上げたと考えられるが、将来を見通す際、懸念材料がいくつかあり、政府の対応が求められると結論付ける。, In this paper, we show that there was a rapid expansion of housing credit in Japan after 1970 and then consider what benefits and costs the rapid expansion of housing credit conferred on Japanese households and whether it was, on balance, a good thing or a bad thing for them. On the one hand, the rapid expansion of housing credit made it easier for households to purchase housing, which in turn enabled them to purchase housing at a younger age and en able d them to avoid the need to pay rent. On the other hand, the rapid expansion of housing cr edit increased the h ousing loan repayment burden of households, which in turn forced them to cut back on non-housing consumption and weakened their ability to accumulate financial assets in preparation for retirement. We c onclude that, until now, the benefits of the expansion of housing credit seems to have outweighed the costs thereof, as a result of which it has increas ed the welfare of households but that there are some areas of concern and that the government should tak e the necessary steps to alleviate these concerns .

In this paper, we analyze the borrowing behavior of Japanese households in comparison to the other Group of Seven (G7) countries and also broken down by the age group of the household head. We find that pre-retirement households (households with a head in the 50-59 age group) in Japan do not have inordinate amounts of debt and that their financial health is satisfactory. However, we also find that households with a head in the 30-39 age group have shown a sharp increase in debt holdings in recent years, due partly to the fact that tax breaks for housing purchase, reforms in the housing loan market since the early 2000s, and expansionary monetary policy enabled Japanese households to purchase housing at a younger age than they could previously. We therefore need to monitor the borrowing behavior of this cohort over time as the Bank of Japan normalizes its monetary policy, especially since households have become more vulnerable to rising interest rates as the share of households who have chosen variablerate housing loans has increased in recent years.

This paper examines the impact of the failed coup d’état attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, on people’s happiness, life satisfaction, and trust and finds that the plot had a significant negative effect on all three variables. This paper is the first to show that coups d’état can have a significant adverse effect on people’s well-being, as in the case of terrorist attacks.

This paper analyzes the determinants of the wealth decumulation behavior of the retired elderly in Japan using unique information from two household surveys, and by so doing, attempts to assess the relative importance of precautionary saving and bequest motives in explaining the lower than expected rates of wealth decumulation of the retired elderly. Taken together, our analyses of these two datasets show that precautionary saving plays a relatively important role in explaining the lower than expected wealth decumulation rate of the retired elderly, at least in the case of Japan, even though both precautionary saving and bequest motives are important drivers behind this puzzle. Our results also suggest the possibility that financial burden of parental care may also affect the wealth decumulation behavior of the retired elderly in Japan. Given that parental care responsibilities tend to arise relatively late in life, often after retirement, in the case of Japan, our results suggest that the financial burden of parental care may be a relevant issue when analyzing the wealth decumulation behavior of the elderly.

This paper examines various aspects of elderly poverty and its measurement. It first discusses some of the most important issues relating to measuring elderly poverty. It then reviews recent trends in elderly poverty, which show considerable heterogeneity in the extent of elderly poverty even among developed countries. Such cross-country differences are due at least partly to differences in the generosity of public old-age pensions and other social safety nets for the elderly. Empirical evidence also corroborates that the expansion of public pension programs has often played a key role in reducing elderly poverty.

This paper shows, using data from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey, that housing credit has become increasingly available over time in Japan, especially since 2000, and that this has made it easier for Japanese households to purchase housing and enabled them to do so at an earlier age. However, it also shows that the greater availability of housing credit has increased households' housing loan repayment burden, which has resulted in their cutting back on their other consumption expenditures and created the potential for retirement insecurity. Another concern is that the increasing availability of housing credit has been accompanied by a pronounced shift from fixed-rate to variablerate housing loans. This is cause for concern given the low level of financial literacy that prevails among the Japanese population and the likelihood that interest rates on variablerate housing loans will be raised sooner or later as monetary policy is tightened.

本稿では，日本において，人口高齢化が家計貯蓄率にどのような影響をおよぼしうるの かを検証するため，日本の高齢者世帯の貯蓄行動を分析する．分析には，総務省統計局 が実施している「家計調査」およびゆうちょ財団が実施している「家計と貯蓄に関する 調査」からのデータを用いる．分析結果により，以下のことが示される．すなわち，（1）日本では，働いている高齢者世帯は正の貯蓄をしているものの，彼らの貯蓄率は若い世 帯よりも低い．一方，退職後の高齢者世帯の貯蓄率は大きく負である，（2）退職後の高 齢者世帯が資産を取り崩す傾向は年々緩やかに強まっており，この傾向は主に社会保障 給付の削減によるものである，（3）退職後の高齢者世帯は，資産を取り崩してはいるが， 取り崩し率は最も単純なライフ・サイクル仮説が予測しているほど高くはなく，これは 主に予備的貯蓄と遺産動機の存在によるものであることが示唆される．, In this paper, we analyze the saving behavior of elderly households in Japan in order to shed light on the impact of population aging on the household saving rate. The data sources we use for this analysis are the “Family Income and Expenditure Survey,” conducted by the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and the“Survey on Households and Saving,”conducted by the Yu-cho Foundation. Our main findings are as follows: (1) In Japan, the saving rate of the working elderly is positive but lower than that of younger households. By contrast, the saving rate of the retired elderly is negative and high in absolute magnitude; (2) the wealth decumulation rate of the retired elderly has shown a moderate increase over time, and this is due primarily to reductions over time in social security benefits; and (3) the retired elderly are decumulating their wealth but not as rapidly as predicted by the simple life-cycle hypothesis, due primarily to the presence of precautionary saving and bequest motives

In this paper, we analyze the borrowing behavior of Japanese households in comparison to the other Group of Seven (G7) countries and also broken down by the age group of the household head. We find that pre-retirement households (households with a head in the 50-59 age group) in Japan do not have inordinate amounts of debt and that their financial health is satisfactory. However, we also find that households with a head in the 30-39 age group have shown a sharp increase in debt holdings in recent years, due partly to the fact that tax breaks for housing purchase, reforms in the housing loan market since the early 2000s, and expansionary monetary policy enabled Japanese households to purchase housing at a younger age than they could previously. We therefore need to monitor the borrowing behavior of this cohort over time as the Bank of Japan normalizes its monetary policy, especially since households have become more vulnerable to rising interest rates as the share of households who have chosen variablerate housing loans has increased in recent years.

This paper examines the impact of the failed coup d'état attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, on people's happiness, life satisfaction, and trust and finds that the plot had a significant negative effect on all three variables. This paper is the first to show that coups d'état can have a significant adverse effect on people's well-being, as in the case of terrorist attacks.

To help shed light on the implications of intergenerational transfers for wealth inequality,this paper examines whether or not individuals who receive intergenerational transfers from their parents are more likely to leave bequests to their children than those who do not using data for Japan and the United States. The estimation results show that the receipt of intergenerational transfers from parents and/or parents-in-law increases the likelihood of individuals’leaving bequests to their own children in both Japan and the United States,which in turn is likely to contribute to the persistence or widening of wealth disparities. However, such a tendency is found to be stronger among less better-off households in both countries, and this may help alleviate the disequalizing effect of intergenerational transfers on the distribution of wealth, at least to some extent.

This paper examines the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment using data on 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 attempts to assess the role of borrowing constraints in determining intergenerational educational mobility in a more direct manner than previous attempts made in the literature. We find that there has been a steady increase in the extent of the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment, resulting in lower intergenerational mobility, during the postwar period in Japan. We also find that while the importance of borrowing constraints for determining intergenerational educational mobility declined at one time, it seems to have become significant enough once again to lower intergenerational educational mobility for the youngest cohort we examined in this paper. However, our analysis also 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 early investments in children's human capital for their subsequent academic advancement.

This paper examines the implications of providing care to elderly parents for adult children's retirement plans using microdata 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 to address 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.

This paper examines recent trends and determinants of happiness inequality in Japan using unique data from the “Preference Parameters Study of Osaka University” that was conducted annually in Japan during the 2003-2013 period. The data illustrate that, despite some fluctuations, Japan observed a fall in happiness inequality along with income growth during this period. By estimating Recentered Influence Function regressions, we find a negative and significant relationship between income level and happiness inequality, as found for other countries. The results also show that people’s perception of their relative standing in the income spectrum matters for the level as well as the dispersion of happiness. Other key determinants of happiness inequality include the insecurity of jobs, unemployment, the fear of becoming unemployed in the near future, having health concerns, feeling a sense of loneliness, and the expected coverage of living costs by public pensions after retirement, all of which have a positive effect on happiness inequality except that the public pension variable negatively affects the dispersion of happiness. Our empirical analysis illustrates that happiness inequality is a useful addition to the set of conventional inequality indicators to monitor and better understand social inequality and to formulate measures to tackle inequality-related issues.