Economic Analysis of Declining Fertility

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1. Marriage involves economic decisions that encompass different generations. This is because such factors as cohabitation with parents, parents' incomes, and the amount of income transfer from parents considerably affect the marriage probability.2. The existence of a cohort effect in the labor market was confirmed, namely, a strong tendency for the cohort with a high unemployment rate immediately before graduation to be continuously unemployed or atypically employed in the future. In addition, it was clarified that this cohort effect was especially apparent among those who only graduated from junior high school or high school.3. Up until recently, the main factors contributing to the decrease in the birthrate of Japan were on the female side, such as less preference for a child, and higher academic qualifications and careers in the labor market. However, the labor market demand for young men is expected to increase for the coming several years as postwar baby boomers retire en masse, … More and as a result, a positive effect on the birthrate is also expected.4. The steeper a seniority wage curve is in a company, the more likely its employees retire in the first half of their 50s, and in order for the companies to effectively use aged labor, treatments based on seniority must be reviewed. Moreover, the retirement rate is low in companies that aim to evaluate the performance of the aged workers fairly and have a training system for elderly employees. Further, the retirement rate for over 55 year olds is lower in companies that have a high rate of employees with shorter working hours.5. The purpose of the long term care insurance introduced in Japan in fiscal 2000 was to correct hospitalization for nonmedical reasons, and to make medical expense efficient. Whether the purpose was actually achieved was examined using the national health insurance receipt data which found that in designated hospitals, the discharge rate of the elderly dramatically increased for a while after the introduction of the long term care insurance, but already in 2002, 2 years after the introduction, the rate went down. Thus it can be said that effects of the introduction of the long term care insurance on long-term in-patient including hospitalization for nonmedical reasons remained temporary. Less