“Prince Charming Syndrome?” Gender gap in preferences for defined contribution pensions in Japan

Using survey data collected by the Japan Institute of Life Insurance in 2002, this study finds that a significant gender gap existed in defined contribution (DC) pension knowledge among workers employed at small- to medium-sized private firms in Japan. Even with similar DC knowledge, however, men and women reveal different preferences for DC pensions, indicating that their perceptional responses may widely differ from actual behaviors. Apart from the knowledge gap, the result shows evidence of the Prince Charming Syndrome among female employees as a significant source of the gender gap in DC participation rates. Among corporate pension-covered employees, the gender difference in the efficacy of DC portability is a more significant gap-generating factor. DC tax advantage is particularly favored by pension-covered female employees over male counterparts, reducing the DC preference gap. No similar evidence is found for employees with no corporate pension coverage.     

Family structure and well-being at older ages in Japan

The family structure of older Japanese is projected to change dramatically as a result of very low fertility, increasing levels of non-marriage, childlessness, and divorce, and declining intergenerational co-residence. To provide an empirical basis for speculation about the implications of projected increases in single-person and couple-only households, we use two sources of data to describe relationships between family structure and the physical and emotional well-being of Japanese men and women aged 60 and above. We find that marriage is positively associated with self-rated health and emotional well-being among older men but not women. In contrast to expectations, however, we find only limited evidence that the presence of children contributes to well-being. Taken as a whole, our results suggest that declines in marriage may have negative implications for the well-being of older Japanese men while the implications of declines in fertility and intergenerational co-residence may be less than popularly believed.     

Trends in old-age functioning and disability in Japan, 1993-2002

Disability is a burden to individuals and society. Population ageing, combined with the fact that disability is most common among the elderly, has focused attention on trends in old-age disability. This study estimates trends in functioning and disability among Japanese elderly from 1993 to 2002 and contrasts the patterns with those found in the USA. Japan is an especially interesting country because its age structure is relatively old, and it currently has the highest life expectancy in the world despite the fact that just 50 years ago its life expectancy was in the bottom half of all countries. As in the USA, disability rates have fallen. If it were not for the gains in disability between 1993 and 2002, there would have been 1.1 million more disabled elderly in 2002. The reductions were experienced broadly across socio-demographic and economic groups. Increases in education across cohorts are associated with the declines in disability.     

College tuition payment and household consumption in Japan

Because tuition payment comprises a large proportion of expenses in households with children in universities, it causes large and clearly predictable changes in discretionary income in predetermined months. This study examines consumption smoothing for those households as an alternative test of the life-cycle/permanent income hypothesis, using the Japanese Family Income and Expenditure Survey. We show that a one yen decrease in discretionary income due to tuition payment is associated with 0.1–0.2 yen decrease in non-tuition spending in the month of tuition payment, showing that those households are not engaged in consumption smoothing.     

Relative Income and Happiness in Asia: Evidence from Nationwide Surveys in China, Japan, and Korea

This study attempts to examine relative income effects on perceived happiness in three major Asian countries—China, Japan, and Korea—in comparison with the United Sates, on the basis of largely comparable nationwide surveys in these countries. Consistent with the results from previous studies in Western countries, comparisons with an individual’s own income and average income of the reference group are significantly associated with the individual’s perceived happiness in Asia. The associations between relative income and happiness are stronger for individual income than family income in China, while the opposite is true in Japan and Korea. Even after controlling for the subjective assessment of family income or personal class identification within the society as a whole, income comparisons within the reference group matter for assessing happiness, especially when using family income for comparisons. Moreover, relative deprivation within the reference group, which is measured by the Yitzhaki index, is negatively related to happiness, providing more evidence for the validity of the relative income hypothesis.     

Changes in durable stocks, portfolio allocation, and consumption expenditure in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake

To understand the household recovery process from unexpected serious damage caused by a natural disaster, we analyze household data from the Kobe earthquake in 1995. We address three questions—how damaged stocks of durable wealth are reinvested, how an ex post portfolio of borrowing or dissaving is reallocated to diversify the asset shocks caused by the disaster, and how formal and informal consumption insurance mechanisms are effective for amending home damage—all of which have been largely unanswered. We obtain three findings. First, people respond to negative income changes and housing damage by reinvesting damaged wealth. Second, households borrow extensively to amend the large housing damage caused by the earthquake. However, they dissave only for minor household asset damage. Third, consumption smoothing is not achieved for nondurable goods that are significantly affected by negative income changes and household asset damage. These findings suggest that asset shocks caused by a large natural disaster are not sufficiently diversified for households, indicating a large gap in designing effective insurance mechanisms.     

CAN EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY EXPLAIN REPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOR IN THE CONTEMPORARY UNITED STATES?

Can evolutionary psychology explain human behavior in postindustrial societies? Critics point out that, contrary to its prediction, wealthy men in contemporary societies do not have more children than poor men. I replicate Pérusse's (1993) finding with a large, representative sample and demonstrate that, while they do not have more children, wealthy men nonetheless have more sex partners and copulate more frequently than poor men. They would therefore have achieved greater reproductive success in the ancestral environment without effective means of contraception.     

Social Capital and the Human Psyche: Why Is Social Life "Capital"?

In this article, we propose a revised definition of social capital, premised on the principles of evolutionary psychology. We define social capital as any feature of a social relationship that, directly or indirectly, confers reproductive benefits to a participant in that relationship. This definition grounds the construct of social capital in human nature by providing a basis for inferring the underlying motivations that humans may have in common, rather than leaving the matter of what humans use capital for unspoken. Discussions and empirical reviews are presented on the innateness of human sociability, sex differences in sociability, and psychological mechanisms that mediate sociability .