A Wife’s Separate Financial Arrangement in Contemporary Japan

This article tests the applicability of Treas’s transaction cost economic framework to contexts outside the allocation of bank accounts among married couples in the United States. Using the Japanese Panel Study of Consumer Life, the authors apply logistic regressions among Japanese couples who have joint accounts to predict (a) the chance that the wife has a separate bank account from the joint account and (b) the chance that she has an allowance. The results provide only partial support for the hypotheses based on Treas’s framework. Whereas Treas argues that the potential discontinuity of a marriage has a major influence on a couple’s separate financial arrangement, the study finds no evidence consistent with this argument. Although some of Treas’s hypotheses are well supported when predicting the chance that a Japanese wife has an allowance, the same hypotheses are not supported when predicting the chance that she has a separate bank account.