What Accounts for the Onerous Care Burden at Home in Japan? Evidence from Household Data(in Japanese)

Satoshi Shimizutani and Haruko Noguchi

ESRI Discussion paper series from Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)

Abstract: One of the most important purposes of Japan's introduction of public long-term care insurance in 2000 was to diminish the care burden at home, which traditionally depends heavily on women. This study takes advantage of unique micro-level information to examine whether the care burden has decreased for the first time. Moreover, we investigate what factors determine the care burden in individual households. Our empirical findings suggest that total care hours of the main caregiver at home slightly decreased after the introduction of the long-term care insurance. Still, the number of care hours worked by the main caregiver-mostly women-increased. If the sample is divided into those who work more than eight hours and less than eight hours, the share of households with longer care hours has not substantially declined. Both care receivers and care givers are in worse health conditions in the case of longer care hours. In other words, the care burden takes a serious toll both in hours spent and on physical condition. We propose several hypotheses to explain why the care burden at home is still enormous, even several years after the introduction of public care insurance. We found that this is partly explained by (1) an increase in the monetary burden to use care services for low-income households, (2) care by caregivers at home cannot be replaced by outsourcing, and (3) strategic bequest motives in the case that care hours are extremely long (more than 12 hours per day) .

Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2003-10
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Journal Article: What Accounts for the Onerous Care Burden at Home in Japan? Evidence from Household Data (in Japanese) (2005)
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