Volume 24, Number 1 (Winter) 1989
Hill, M. Anne. 1989. "Female Labor Supply in Japan: Implications of the Informal Sector For Labor Force Participation and Hours of Work." Journal of Human Resources 24(1):143-161.
This paper extends previous work on labor supply in Japan by treating the simultaneous labor force participation and hours of work decisions for Japanese wives, both employees and family workers. It estimates a trichotomous participation model for a sample from the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, and then estimates hours and wage equations, and aggregate labor supply elasticities. The empirical results generally confirm the economic model's theoretical predictions. Although the estimated aggregate wage and income elasticities for employees are somewhat higher than previous estimates for the U.S., they are of the same order of magnitude. However, the level of the husband's income has an unexpected positive effect on the annual hours that employees work and the elasticities estimated for family workers are usually large.
The author is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Economics and Finance, Baruch College, City University of New York. She would like to thank David Crawford, Mark Killingsworth, Russell Ross, and Kiroki Tsurumi, participants in seminars at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. This paper was presented at the Fifth Econometric Society World Congress, August 23, 1985. This research was supported in part by a Rutgers University Research Council Summer Fellowship.
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