Comparing Public Attitudes Towards Providing for the Livelihood of the Elderly in Two aging Sodieties: Germany and Japan

Bernd Hayo and Hiroyuki Ono ()
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Hiroyuki Ono: Faculty of Economics, Toyo Universtiy

No 200703, Marburg Working Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: This paper studies attitudes about who should provide for the livelihood of the elderly in two aging societies, namely Germany and Japan. Applying an ordered logit model to individual data from representative public opinion surveys, it is analysed which socio-demographic, economic or political variables help to explain people’s attitudes on whether the government or individuals should be responsible for the livelihood of the elderly. We find that while higher income makes people more inclined towards the individual option, age is found to do the opposite in both countries. We conjecture that this age effect is related to the level of knowledge about the current situation of the public pension system. We also find that the part-time work status significantly affects attitudes in both countries, but not the same way. It affects adversely the inclination towards a government-based pension system in the case of Japan but positively in Germany. Other significant influences are the pensioner status of the respondents in Japan and their political position in the case of German data.

Keywords: Livelihood of elderly; pension reform; public attitudes; aging societies; Germany; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H55 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-eec, nep-ltv and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb02/makro/forschung/gel ... kel/2007-03_hayo.pdf First version, 2007 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Comparing public attitudes toward providing for the livelihood of the elderly in two aging societies: Germany and Japan (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mar:volksw:200703

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