EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Breastfeeding practices and parental employment in Japan

Miki Kobayashi () and Emiko Usui
Additional contact information
Miki Kobayashi: Kobe University

Review of Economics of the Household, 2017, vol. 15, issue 2, No 10, 579-596

Abstract: Abstract Much research shows that breastfeeding provides short- and long-term health benefits for both mothers and their children. However, few studies have yet investigated the factors which may promote or inhibit breastfeeding practices in Japan. To fill this research gap, this paper uses data newly gathered in 2012 on breastfeeding initiation and duration for each child of each mother, which enable us to estimate mother fixed-effects models that control for unobserved differences among mothers. Compared to mothers who leave their jobs after childbirth, mothers who return to work within a year after childbirth do not significantly differ in breastfeeding initiation but have a breastfeeding duration which is shorter by 1.654 months. On the other hand, when fathers work under a flextime system after childbirth, breastfeeding initiation is higher, and the duration is longer by 4.418 months. Therefore, letting fathers work under a flextime system would help promote breastfeeding practices in Japan.

Keywords: Breastfeeding; Maternal employment; Paternal job responsibility; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11150-014-9246-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Breastfeeding Practices and Parental Employment in Japan (2014) Downloads
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:kap:reveho:v:15:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11150-014-9246-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/11150/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11150-014-9246-9

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economics of the Household is currently edited by Shoshana Grossbard

More articles in Review of Economics of the Household from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-05-13
Handle: RePEc:kap:reveho:v:15:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11150-014-9246-9