 Who suffers from the COVID-19 shocks? Labor market heterogeneity and welfare consequences in JapanShinnosuke Kikuchi, Sagiri Kitao and Minamo Mikoshiba Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 2021, vol. 59, issue C Abstract: Effects of the COVID-19 shocks in the Japanese labor market vary across workers of different age groups, genders, employment types, education levels, occupations, and industries. We document heterogeneous changes in employment and earnings in response to the COVID-19 shocks, observed in various data sources during the initial months after the onset of the pandemic in Japan. We then feed these shocks into a life-cycle model of heterogeneous agents to quantify welfare consequences of the COVID-19 shocks. In each dimension of the heterogeneity, the shocks are amplified for those who earned less prior to the crisis. Contingent workers are hit harder than regular workers, younger workers than older workers, females than males, and workers engaged in social and non-flexible jobs than those in ordinary and flexible jobs. The most severely hurt by the COVID-19 shocks has been a group of female, contingent, low-skilled workers, engaged in social and non-flexible jobs and without a spouse of a different group. Keywords: COVID-19; Japan; Labor market; Welfare effect; Life-cycle model; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jjieco:v:59:y:2021:i:c:s088915832030054x DOI: 10.1016/j.jjie.2020.101117 Access Statistics for this article Journal of the Japanese and International Economies is currently edited by Takeo Hoshi More articles in Journal of the Japanese and International Economies from Elsevier |
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