Empirical Analysis of Precautionary Savings in Japan

过去对预防性储蓄的研究大多是定性的。本文是对日本预防性储蓄的定量研究。预防性储蓄有两个组成部分。一种是消费者试图减少不确定的通货膨胀或非自愿失业造成的未来收入波动。这部分被称为周期性预防性储蓄。二是退休后的准备金。这更多是结构性的，取决于人口结构和养老金制度。我们从两个角度分析了这两种预防性储蓄。一个是对日本银行进行的储蓄民意调查的调查。根据这项调查，70- 80%的受访者为雨天储蓄。至于结构性预防性储蓄，最近几天越来越多的受访者认为这是重要的。另一个重点是周期性预防性储蓄。本文利用对工人家庭和农民家庭的调查数据，试图衡量收入风险对周期性预防储蓄的影响。农民的收入风险大于工人。农民储蓄总额中预防性支出的比例也高于工人。计算出的预防性储蓄的时间路径在第一次石油危机后不久就达到了顶峰，工人和农民都是如此。从那时起，预防性储蓄的规模对工人来说已经可以忽略不计，而对农民来说仍然很大。

Most of the past studies on the precautionary savings have been qualitative. This is a quantitative study on the precautionary savings in Japan. Precautionary savings have two components. One is motivated by the consumer's attempt to reduce the volatility of future income caused by uncertain inflation or involuntary unemployment. This part is called cyclically precautionary savings. The other is provision after retirement. This is more structural and depends on the population structure and the pension system. We analyzed these two types of precautionary savings from two standpoints. One is an investigation of the Survey of Public Opinions on Savings conducted by the Bank of Japan. According to this survey 70-80 % of surveyed respondents save for rainy days. As for the structurally precautionary savings, they are increasingly recognized as important by the respondents in recent days. The other focuses on the cyclically precautionary savings. An attempt was made to measure the effect of income risk on the cyclically precautionary savings from the survey data of workers' households and farmers' ones.Our findings are as follows. The income risk of farmers is larger than that of workers. The proportion of precautionary parts out of total savings for farmers is also larger than that for workers. The time paths of the calculated precautionary savings have peaks soon after the first oil crisis for both workers and farmers. The magnitude of precautionary savings has become negligible for workers since then, while it has been still large for farmers.