An empirical analysis of the effect of increasing male wage inequality on female marriage behavior in Japan

Shoichi Sasaki

No 1401, Discussion Papers from Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of the greater inequality in the lower than in the upper tail of the male wage distribution on female marriage behavior in Japan, using a new analysis framework. I first formulated the analytical model applying the gmedian-preserving spread h method to a marriage search model and then analyzed the theoretical hypothesis empirically, using extensive individual Japanese data from the Employment Status Survey, which examined a large sample. The theoretical and empirical results show that the higher male wage inequality in the lower tail, which is due to an increase in the male non-regular employment rate, has a significant effect on the rising single-female rate. Furthermore, the increase in the gnon-regular employment h rate, regardless of the employment contract period, also has a significant effect on the rising single-female rate, even where the increasing male wage in the lower tail is controlled for. These results suggest that policies to improve the income security of the low-income male and to promote a shift from non-regular to regular employment are needed to raise the female marriage rate.

Keywords: higher male wage inequality in the lower tail; non-regular employment; female marriage behavior; search model; median-preserving spread (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 J12 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32pages
Date: 2014-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.kobe-u.ac.jp/RePEc/koe/wpaper/2014/1401.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:koe:wpaper:1401

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kimiaki Shirahama ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).