Volume 20, Number 1 (Winter) 1985
Mosk, Carl, and Yoshi-Fumi Nakata. 1985. "The Age-Wage Profile and Structural Change in the Japanese Labor Market for Males, 1964-1982." Journal of Human Resources 20(1):100-116.
The focus of this paper is on the impact of demographic change and the catching-up of Japanese industry with the West technologically upon the age-wage profile in Japan over the period 1964-1982. We argue that changes on the supply side of the aggregate labor market, especially the aging of the Japanese labor force, have had a profound influence on determining the relative wages of senior to junior workers. But we also argue that structural shift on the demand side, especially that associated with the slowing down of output growth as Japan caught up with Western economies, was important in determining the age-wage profile. Finally we offer a variety of statistical findings consistent with our thesis, including new evidence on the dualistic structure of the Japanese labor market.
Mosk is Associate Professor in the Economics Department, University of
Santa Clara, and member of the Graduate Group in Demography, University of
California, Berkeley. Nakata is a graduate student, Economics Departments of the
University of California, Berkeley, and Osaka University.
We are grateful to the Institute of International Studies,
University of California, Berkeley, for funds to carry out this research, to
Paul Rothstein and Mami Takinami for assisting us with the preparation of the
data set, and to Albert Fishlow for valuable comments on the work.
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