Abstract
A high rate of the elderly participating in labor force and a high rate of their living together with their children have characterized the Japanese aging society. Although these features are still evident, a new pattern of living together has emerged since the mid-1990s: the number of living together with unmarried children has been increasingly frequent among the elderly. Economic conditions of the elderly and the child generation are related to the emergence of this pattern. Based on the quantitative analyses of SSM 2005 and JGSS 2010–15, this paper explores the changes in relations between family types and economic status for the elderly aged 60 or over. It is suggested that for low-income households, living together with children implies the mutual dependency between parent and child generation in an economic sense under uncertain conditions in recent Japanese society.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The following description relys on Esping-Andersen (1999/2000).
- 3.
Seike and Yamada (2004) is a research based on their interest on promoting employment of the elderly.
- 4.
- 5.
SSM Surveys use nationally representative sample aged from 20 to 69. The 2005 survey targeted for 13,031 cases and the response ratio is 44.1%; 5742 cases are valid. Male cases are 2660.
- 6.
JGSS 2010, 2012 and 2015 are also based on nationally representative samples aged from 20 to 89, targeted for 9000 cases (2010), 9000 (2012) and 4500 (2015). The response rates are 62.2, 59.0 and 52.6%. This paper uses an integrated data set of 2010, 2012 and 2015 that use the same format of collecting the information about income and household composition.
- 7.
Income is surveyed not by the actual amount but by the income code. For example, the income code indicating more than 1.5 million yen and less than 2.5 million yen is calculated as 2 million yen. Income code varies among waves of the survey.
- 8.
All figures are adjusted by the 2015 consumer price as 100. The indexes are 85.4 in 1985, 97.6 in 1995, 96.9 in 2005, 96.5 in 2010, 96.2 in 2012 and 100 in 2015. In case of JGSS 2010–15, after actual incomes of each survey data are adjusted, average incomes are calculated.
- 9.
Income codes are slightly different between the 1995 and the 2005 surveys.
- 10.
See Iwai (2011) for analysis of the social status and income gaps of the elderly.
- 11.
See Iwai (2013) for life course changes after the mid-1990s.
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Acknowledgements
1. The 2005 SSM Survey Committee permits the use of data from the Social Stratification and Mobility (SSM) Survey.
2. The Japanese General Social Survey (JGSS) are designed and carried out by the JGSS Research Center at Osaka University of Commerce (Joint Usage/Research Center for Japanese General Surveys accredited by Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) in collaboration with the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo.
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Iwai, H. (2020). Changing Lives of the Japanese Elderly Under Uncertainty: An Analysis of Family Types and Economic Status. In: Tsai, MC., Iwai, N. (eds) Quality of Life in Japan. Quality of Life in Asia, vol 13. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8910-8_6
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